Orchard Omniscient
by lady vonne
Summary: In which Draco Malfoy sees the dead, and the dead won't leave him be.
1. Audience

**Vonne: **Originally, this was going to be just a short piece about Draco and his life after the War. However, after some thought, I feel like I want to write more about such a story so, that being said, I'm going to start my first chapter fic based off of Draco and post-War life. Warning for an overflow of angst, meant to stand as a character analysis of those after the War. I hope you enjoy it!

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><p><strong>Orchard Omniscient<br>**_"Those who have crossed with direct eyes to death's other Kingdom Remember us, not as lost Violent souls, but only as the hollow men. The stuffed men."_

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><p>Lights flash. Curtains rustle. Behind the scenes, everything is chaotic.<p>

In the crowd sits a collection of the light and the dark. The important and incessant. The living and the dead. Onward, they shift their attention to the sheath of red that flows, billowing in the night like the skirts of a woman or the ends of a bed; inviting or intriguing, not a soul can tell. Behind the stages stands a man, tall and slender, with blond hair and gray eyes and the ghost of a sneer tacked tastefully to his lips. It's all in his head, but he sees the rows of those who chose to attend. The Amateur Photographer, The Wolfman, The Secret Cousin, The Best Friend, The Prank-Puller, Father Time, and The Potions Master. All in the presence for his final say. His great big finale. One last time before the see all, end all of his magnificently massive departure.

Ladies and gentlemen, Draco Malfoy.

And the world thus sways with him, welcoming as if knowledgeable. Adoring as if encouraging. Supportive, the very stars sparkle prettily in his presence, and the breaths of the land then fawn for him as if a deity- something falsely divine that, for the greater good, will finally be put to rest. And the simple chirp of the unseen crickets clap in lieu of his entrance; its almost loving with admiration, too, you know, but pompous little thing that he is, absolutely none of it goes unnoticed. Yet it's with a rush of elegance that he strides forward, out into the spotlight of really nothing more than the glisten of the moon and the rush of nightly lungs. And the midnight inhales along with him, through the nostrils of the nose that's nothing more than the trees and the bark- flesh, naturally.

Still, it does nothing to elude from the image of the deep green centerpiece. Green like the eyes of the 'Savior' that he hates, green like the house of the cunning and the villainized- green, of course, like the light before the dark. A pond. A great, big, mossy pond. He knows not of what lies beneath, but embraces the mystery of soon finding out. And he plans to be part of it soon, intermixed with the likes of the lost and the languid. He's ready to leave with the pains and the pings of the pressure that's plagued him and, at this, the Amateur Photographer laughs. He knows not of the side in which he did not see and, because of it, Draco thinks he'll start with him first.

But not yet. Not now. For now, Draco graces the surface of the twinkling water with the tease of his polished feet. Gently, the toe of his nice, leather Oxfords ruffle the complexion and send frilly patterns across the expanse of the crystal-like entity. And the water rises up to his ankles, pooling through the fabric of the dark black trousers that he'd properly pressed just for the occasion. A splendor of surprise erupts with the action. Along the lines of the clearing, Draco Malfoy's guests press their hands together and the pretty ones blow kisses from the shadows, enamored. "Thank you all for coming," he says, and its the bugs on the ground and the ghosts in his eyesight that flourish with the fancy. Still.

"One for the papers, Draco?" the Amateur shouts, and the blond looks up, just in time to dizzily catch the light of the child's camera.

Colin Creevy, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Vincent Crabbe, Fred Weasley, Albus Dumbledore, and Severus Snape. He could have saved them all, he thinks; and candidly, its been driving him crazy, but that's beyond the point. No amount of therapy can fix this leak. No excess of gauze can prevent this wound. They're dead, and gone, and _six feet _now, so Draco starts with the youngest, the smallest, and the purest. Creevy, Colin- dead at sixteen and daring enough to push himself through it. In the vision that he has of him, a head full of curly golden locks masks the image of two curious orbs, wide with inquisition. He's slumped against a pink haired woman, and his lap cradles the toy by the bunched up fabric of his trousers. But what Draco thinks of when he thinks of the Amateur now is a pair of blood-tainted shoes and, when a knot forms at the center of his unforgiving throat, he looks away in the meantime.

They were too tight. He remembers. Cutting off the circulation in his limbs, Draco was running through the Hogwarts corridors, when he felt his feet strangled by the immensity of them. And it was hot, for all around sparked the fire that latched up to the very soles; and everything was ash and everything was dust. May 2, 1998; the End of the End. Even now when he remembers, his fingers shake beneath the slip of the water around him; Colin Creevy's smiling corpse had beamed at him from across the hallways.

Longbottom had been the one to find him, not soon before, of course, the insufferable Potter. "I told you you were just jealous," muses the Amateur from his spot against the tree, and for once Draco bites his tongue. He's sitting on the couch on a Friday night when the doorbell rings and, at his porch, stands a stubby solicitor with a smile on his face and a special deal on Potter bobble heads. The following Saturday finds him browsing the streets of Hogsmeade in disguise when he spots what he first takes to be a mere reflection in the glass before it moves and reveals itself to be nothing more than a rather impressive cut-out of Potter's frame. And thus plays out the worst weekend of the ex-Slytherin's entire existence. Igniting, bloody mugs with the likes of Saint Potter's face on the front are displayed on every street corner. Potter pencils, Potter posters, Potter pocket books. It reaches a climax so high that he can't even gawk at_ himself_ in the front of his own bathroom mirror without getting sick of the unsightly impression. "_The Boy Who'd Lived and Lived and Lived and Lived..."_

Then the Wolfman answers his call.

He advises seriously, "It's not wise to dwell too much on the past, you know," and everything falls silent.

Remus Lupin is caught in the moonlight, his pale face lit up generously by death. He's just as rugged as he'd always been, but Draco smells milk chocolate and a breeze of cologne that's five years out of style, but far too closely obsessed over. There's something about the demeanor of the ghost that makes him look fatherly and Draco knows he'd had a child. Teddy Lupin, he hears, is a spectacular little boy now with a head full of blue hair. It does nothing, however, the soothe the strangeness of Draco's certainty- the man would never get to know him. As awful as a professor Draco has always thought Lupin to be, he can barely look at him with the thought. There'd been a War, you see- so big that it'd destroyed houses, and burned down buildings, and demolished cities. Among many, this man had just been one, but it does nothing to prevent the foundations as they shake around Draco Malfoy's floor plan.

Lupin's eyes flick over to the twinkling bottles perched up against the pile of Draco's discarded clothes. He's nothing more than a figment of the boy's distortion, but he waits a long moment before clucking his tongue in disapproval. "Now _that _doesn't look like chocolate, Mr. Malfoy."

"Very well spotted, Professor," responds Draco, irises wet with the woes of the Fire Whiskey. His fingers fiddle in the depths of his pockets. He's trying to make amends here and the lot of them have only strove to make it difficult. Perhaps, he thinks, he deserves it, but most of all he'd like to get it over with.

Anyway, it's been twelve tantalizing months. Since the insanity, Ministry officials have rebuilt Hogwarts and lessons have started up anew. As it goes, Draco purchases his own flat, decorates the interior and, when its all said and done, steps back to take in the result of what's been eighteen uneasy years in the making. He fills a rather bothersome void in his chest with the contents of liquor and dozes off to the nightmares that persist in his sleep. But in the end, Draco guesses that there really must not be any rest for the wicked and, with the notion, allows the pond water to inch up to his waist.

He's sorry he ever poked fun at Professor Lupin for his poverty. All the money that the Malfoy's had in France is gone, along with the homes, and the valuables, and the "assets". He's got not a penny to his name now and, despite the left-over belongings, Draco feels like nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing. Kind of like Lupin. "Quite a lot like Lupin," corrects the man.

"Right," mutters Draco. "Quite a lot like Lupin." Still.

He's a deer in the headlights, but there is no highway, there is no driver, and there is no road. Rather, wind blows, ghosts talk- and he's in a tux, and he feels like a bloody idiot.

Draco Malfoy is long past thanking his guests for their arrival. Nevertheless, they sit and they stare and he's half-soaking wet with his blond hair messy on the crown of his skull and his head rather hazy in the process. But what _that_ permits is the temporary torture of silence that he can't quite stand in the first place. Lupin frowns back at the choice of his drink and Draco, all the while, permits him. "Don't tell me you wouldn't either," he mutters, and The Secret Cousin scoffs from the side lines.

"You know," she says, tantalizingly, "he never did. Brilliant, that man." And the Wolfman grins in way of his thanks.

Anyway. The woman is absolutely noting like Draco, but similar, he notes, in the respect of their noses. Pointed, the structured end sits proudly at the end of her face, though she holds it not to the sky, but instead down at the ground daringly; her eyes, on the other hand, watch the boy carefully. And he thinks, in the spot light of her attention, that she and he just might have had a connection, had they known one another in the long run. It's quite the stretch of a possibility, but the cousin, secret as she is, lets her pupils dilate before letting them twist into a stone shade of gray. "I can make my hair blonde, too, if you'd like." Somewhere in the water up to his chest, Draco opens his mouth to tell her that it's quite alright, but looks up to find that she's already done the deed herself. "How's _that _for relations?" asks Nymphadora Tonks, giving Draco a small wink from the spot of her gray flecked demeanor.

With her locks all shiny at her shoulders, Mrs. Tonks looks rather like his mother. Granted, she lacks the sense of poise and properness that Narcissa Malfoy had possessed in her lifetime, but her wonky sense of pride almost flares to redeem her. And even the gentle twist of her lips makes Draco stand still; there's a ping of odd mischief behind every pinch of her posture and, even with the likes of Colin Creevy spent against her shoulder, she possesses a young spark about her as if she may never grow old. He wonders how family reunions with her may have gone and considers, with mournful imagination, that they might have even been enjoyable. Thus, "More than enjoyable, 'Cuz," corrects Tonks through the stretch of his internal monologue. "I'm a blooy Metamorphagus; we'd have had ourselves a riot." And she nods to confirm this, ignoring the way that Draco's own stature tenses.

"Is that so?" he manages to ask, "I take it you also did children's parties?"

In the midsts of the silent scene, Nymphadora gives her cousin a curt little glare. For a swift second, Draco stares back at her and she stares back at him; and the cycle, never ending as it may have been, is broken with the jolt of the woman's bobbing chest. "Aw, what do you know, Remus," says The Secret family member boastfully, "my cousin's got fantastic wit!"

And Draco's grimace lifts for a moment in the meantime.

What he _doesn't _apprehend, however, is the eager way that he ducks his chest into the pond water. It's freezing cold beneath the surface, and he does his best not to shiver. Nevertheless, the rattling rhythm of his teeth stand to expose his discomfort and, fearful of the possibility, he clamps his mouth shut and ignores the bluish twinge of color that his lips take on as a result. He wonders, as a side note, how long he can do this; for the eyes of the remaining ghosts watch him expectantly and he knows that his performance is far from being over. Yet, The Best Friend nods at him once from the shadows and Draco, shivering Draco, swallows hard to mask the madness.

Then he braces himself for the plunge.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

"How did I ever end up like this?"

It's a question he asks the lot of them, but neither of the group makes a move to answer. Rather, they stare from their places, still waiting.

A long time ago, Draco Malfoy had it all. Had he been told that, years later, he'd be contemplating his suicide in the middle of a goddamn puddle, he'd have died of laughter there on the spot. Why on_earth_would a _Malfoy _resort to killing themselves? Such an idea was ridiculous because Malfoys were rich, beautiful, and powerful. They'd owned acres of land and possessed a multitude of galleons in the bank. However, what Draco Malfoy had not considered, of course, was the possibility of his forthcoming downfall. Mummy and Daddy had gone and what that left was Draco and what Draco had was nothing. Huh. "_God_, what a sick joke."

He's about to dunk his head completely beneath the water, but The Best Friend shifts from the shadows and Draco glances up, just in time, to catch his mouth moving. "I suppose," Vincent Crabbe says to the sopping wet madman, "such an event was bound to happen. You were always a bit of a wanker."

"Right," Draco says to the Nothingness, but the outline says nothing and Draco, weary, takes the silence as a hint. In death, the big boned figure looks as if he has been carved from a furnace. His robes are singed and small sparks of dying flames light up at the ends of the tattered fabric. It takes persistence for Draco to look at him, too; for the majority of the boy's fat face is scared pink from the burns in an impossible and peculiar manner. Though Vincent Crabbe was never too much of a sight before the mishap of his curse, even in the darkness the boy resembles something of a disfigured monster.

And Draco can't help but feel completely responsible. They'd been running through the Room of Requirements and he'd been yelling so loud that his throat hurt. In the heat, Draco had looked all over for Crabbe in the wreckage, but had only spotted Goyle. Gregory Goyle, the survivor. And he hadn't even managed to keep a good hand on to _him, _either, because soon he'd been lifted into the air away from him entirely- and then, only then, did Draco's whole world flick to black.

After all was said and done, Crabbe's body was one of the many that had not been found. In the papers, reports flew in suggesting that perhaps his remains would rest forever within the stone of the school. _"Ashes to ashes,"_ Draco now thinks, _"dust to dust,"_ and all that nonsense.

"Maybe they swept me out?" suggests Crabbe seriously and a sob wracks Draco's shoulders.

Reactively, he murmurs, "That's not funny," and Crabbe lifts his lips up in a smile.

"You never really thought I was."

It's true; he hadn't. And the notion makes Draco loathe himself for the snub. Still, around him the world carries on. The wind blows by the mess of his blond hair, moving him in ways that it does not to his guests. And when a soft cricket sounds out in the emptiness, Draco mulls mechanically on his bottom lip. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you," he tells his very best friend, and his eyes sting with the memory.

However, only a slight second passes. Draco's looking down at his distorted reflection when Crabbe shrugs in the close distance. "It's fine," he decides, "I doubt you'd have been able to carry me too far anyway." And despite any previous conclusions Draco had drawn about Crabbe's sense of humor, the blond shuts his eyes and chokes out a solemn little chuckle. "Pity laugh?" tests the blackened bystander. Though Draco says nothing, he gives his head a swift shake and draws his hands across the lids of his eyes, cleaning them. "Well," Crabbe smirks, "what do you know?" and then falls back behind the bushes.

Still. Draco's shoulders shiver above the pond water, but he stares unsteadily into the likes of his own image, so mournful and unfazed below him. And what _that_ permits, however, is the temporary tranquility that he only half-senses in the midsts of his final farewell. Somewhere in the brush behind the clearing, a quiet chirping cries out and Draco, preoccupied, hears nothing. Nevertheless, he's taken with the result of his chaotic youth and, regretful, wishes once that he'd saved himself sooner.

And yet, he says nothing to excuse it. Rather, shaking, Draco raises his eyes in meeting with the bright redheaded teenager- freckle-faced and slouched, as if he very well owns the place. The Prank-Puller is almost nothing like the other apparitions surrounding him now, however. Instead, he garners a certain spark about him in his absolute youth- quite different in the ways of The Secret Cousin, but similar in the existence of the daunting notion of something impending. He doesn't inch forward, but instead lifts his brow, attractive and goofy with the physical attributes of his quite unmistakable poverty. And yet, like a badge, he wears the likes of a hand knitted red sweater. Even in the lack of light, a bright, gold, "F" stands out at his chest.

"George and I thought about spelling your hair red once," he proclaims, and Draco's smile flickers.

"I'd have had you bloody castrated."

Nonetheless, the comment does not seem to jolt Fred Weasley at all and, amused, he rocks vibrantly at his spot against the dewy emerald grass. "Just about permanent hair dye, too," he continues, and his face is so red that he looks as if he's about to burst with laughter. "George cooked up this vile that would have had the color lasting for at _least_ a year."

With the whoosh of the wind outside, Fred Weasley's laughter reaches what Draco Malfoy believes to be impossible heights. Yet, caught up within it, he looks not a thing like an illusion and, instead, appears rather lively with jubilance. Every back and forth sway that his body swerves off to does wonders for him and, fingers clutching his feet, he sniffs back a collection of more muddled chuckles to add excitedly, "We were working on temporary freckles, too."

Shoulders half-way submerged within the water, Draco stares back at the gracefully blond image of his own complexion. It's as if he's watching the vision of himself stuck beyond the pond and he wonders what it will feel like to strain his lungs and hold his breath until he just can't do it anymore. It might hurt, he decides, but then dismisses the notion with a blunt, determined swallow. "I wonder what a never ending eternity with _you_ is going to be like," he collectively snaps, and The Prank-Puller's smile broadens.

"You're alright, Malfoy," Fred announces affirmatively. And all goes quiet.

But Draco hates the quiet and the lack of noise does much to disturb him. Though he does an exceptional amount of nothing about it, he presses his eyes shut to ignore the haunting way that the blackness edges in on him and, to busy himself, repeats a mantra of nonsense under his breath. He thinks, perhaps, that its the alcohol that's driving him crazy, but succumbs to the pressure of the starlight and attempts to consider everything but the nightmares that it brings him. However, the moon-shaped specs of Father Time rip him back to reality and he thinks of space and constellations and_astronomy._

Astronomy, of course, like the towers at Hogwarts. Big, thick, tall ones. High in the expanding sky ones, with windows to the Witching Hour and staircases to the Heavens. The type of towers that he_dreams_ about, tangled beneath the sheets like a child. And that's enough to lead him to taking countless vials of Dreamless Sleep every night too, you know. But Draco doesn't quite want to get into that. Anyway.

The old man's been sitting there contently for what seems like years. He's moved not a muscle, but Draco notes the happy way that his smile remains faint and persistent. There, along the wrinkled complexion of his features, two twinkling blue eyes catch him for a split second before Draco tears his own away, horrified.

He should have taken Albus Dumbledore up on his offer of protection when he'd had the chance.

And _that's _what gets him the very most of all, for the moment that the notion slips into his head, the flood gates open and Draco feels the pressure at the swollen end of his throat. In front of his ex-Headmaster, he tries to conceal the glistening way that his eyes lose the battle, but, as assumed, _this_ one's too clever. "There's no shame in having a conscience, Draco," whispers Dumbledore, and Draco's face is so wet with tears and snot that he almost laughs with humiliation.

"That's easy for you to say," he hisses, and Father Time doesn't even flinch.

"It's what makes us human," he answers back softly, still staring stonily, as if all powerful and divinely knowing.

But Draco blinks out the salty tears that coat his face and hurt his pride. Rather, he figures he's got absolutely none of the latter left anyway and, defeatedly, pushes the stray from his eyes with a sigh. Really, despite everything, he wishes that he'd listened. Nonetheless, it's the same thing that he wishes every night, curled up into a fetal position on the mattress- all that's left of the Manor to begin with. He'd have been so much better off then, too; and perhaps it'd even solidify the likes of his gracious guests. Just like perhaps his parents would have always avoided social rejection. Like perhaps he'd be standing in his own house with a beautiful wife instead of preparing himself to drown within the depths of a moss covered water space. Perhaps.

He'll soon be one with the fishes. And whatever else is rotting down there, of course. So he asks, "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"

And there's no moment of contemplation behind the way the Father's lips move. Instead, every action flows freely and, when he speaks, a certain air of wisdom floats fantastically around him. "I don't claim to know the future, Draco," he emits.

"But you don't deny it, either."

And Father Time smiles in the spotlight.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o**  
><strong>

When the water reaches his neck, Draco Malfoy finally lets his gaze fall to the Potions Master, silent and looming beneath the brush like a banshee. Overpowering. He's tall and tantalizing, and something deep, dark, and crimson oozes out from two deep holes on his pale neck; so Draco has no other choice but to look away.

He can't do it, either. Even in his afterlife, Severus Snape seems every bit too daunting. And it's Draco now, who feels so small.

A pair of delicate, wiry hands clutch the edge of a twinkling band of pond water. They shake, but not with the woes of the weather. Nevertheless, the night carries on and the ghosts wait patiently while, all the while, Draco Malfoy hesitates. Closeted. It does nothing to dismiss the likes of his own lonely figure, tainted and tormented beyond the years of what he assumes has got to be somewhere around eighteen. Going on eight hundred. Soon to be six feet deep within the maggoty confines of the earth, neighbor to all the worms and the corpses in the ground- some of which he'd put there himself. And there's no amount of light, but in the creak of his head, an orb flashes dimly to mock him. The Potions Master stands. His robes float out around him. He's no longer behind the scenes, but everything still is chaotic.

"I should have listened to _you_," Draco chokes out and, reactively, the professor lifts his brow. "God, I was so _stupid._"

"Stupid, no. Foolish, ignorant, and _proud,_ however..."

There's a slight moment that the crickets chirp about them for emphasis. Severus is not alone, but his figure is perhaps the most demanding and possessive in the nighttime. And against the tree bark, Dumbledore allows The Potions Master his piece, eyes closed and humbled beyond the thick glass of his all-seeing gaze. He warns him not about the figure behind the bushes, breath held and eyes wide. Rather, Severus Snape's mere shadow casts the shade in darkness and Draco, too consumed with the likes of the man he'd absolutely idolized, stares on. When he brings his left hand from the water to slide away the newest onset of tears, the flash of a large, ugly mark slices simply through the evening.

He admits tearfully, "I was so scared."

And it's the first time he ever breaks contact. Every damn cell of his terribly trembling being collides into one pile of messiness and he sobs, freely now, despite the guests and the looks that he gets from them. Yet, the act is unwilling- unstoppable, even, for it rises up to the air of his throat and forces its way past his lips like bile. Irrefutable. But the Potion's Master lowers his chin. In an act riddled with composure, he gives Draco Malfoy a curt nod and murmurs, "With good reason," though the whisper is far from an excuse. Rather, strong words float to Malfoy's eardrums like a train wreck. He doesn't exactly look at Severus Snape, but he doesn't quite look away from him either.

"I wasn't expecting you to leave me alone," Malfoy breaths to the reflection of the pond water. He keeps his head down and watches with slow trepidation his tie as it floats on green moss.

Truth of the matter is, however, Draco Malfoy hadn't been expecting _anyone _to leave him alone. Rather, when the war ends, he tip-toes back to his large, luxurious home and follows instruction from his father on how to act for the rest of his post-battle existence. Nonetheless, everything goes to shite when Draco receives his first bloody nose. It's his eighteenth birthday and he's nabbed down the alleyway by a couple of war veterans that smell of whiskey and reek of bitter aggression. They take his wand and they snap it in two. Then they leave him there to rot and when he comes around in the morning, he promises himself to never leave the boundaries of the Manor again.

Anyway, Draco's in too far over his head to spare himself this pity-party. It's when he looks back up at Snape, of course, that he just can't hold it in and, as the tremors reach his already quivering fingertips, he lets out a choking sound that's painful and angry all at the same time. "I think I might hate you," he tells him empty-heartedly and, at the very instant, he slams his hand over his mouth as if he can barely believe he's uttered it.

"And what good what hating me do you, Draco?" inquires the professor, robes still billowing out behind him in the darkness.

"It makes going under a whole lot easier," answers the boy and, for one last time, gives the scope of his audience one last look over.

It's the exit, however, that still remains the hardest part. He can't even bow, his body is so tense.

From the sidelines the Amateur Photogrpaher snaps his last portraits, head against the broad, steady shoulders of his very Secret Cousin. Then The Wolfman frowns, for his eyes remain fixated on the empty liquor bottles, silent disapproval dripping from his every unmasked expression. But the wind goes by and the time only fades, for Draco stands sopping wet without the slightest hint at where to actually begin his end. Though it's The Best Friend that stirs, head sideways as if considering the act as The Prank-Puller seems to lean in slightly in what comes off as a frighteningly morbid interest. And Father Time is blank-faced and The Potions Master is, too. Nonetheless, before the looming shadow in the bushes makes his move, before the cockroaches in the darkness can come forth to devour his bobbing corpse, Draco Malfoy- he actually does it.

In the end, he finally goes under.

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><p><strong>Vonne: <strong>Please review! Thank you!


	2. Encore

**Vonne: **Chapter two! I was so happy from all the reviews that I thought I'd make this a multi-chaptered fic. My first, too! So please don't hesitate to leave me your thoughts/comments/questions in a review. I respond back, I promise!

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><p><strong>Orchard Omniscient<br>**Encore

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><p>Lights dim, curtains close; behind the scenes, he hears them cry: "<em>Encore<em>."

Encore, like the strange sound he hadn't expected to hear. Encore. Like the fuzzy sort of sensation as it creeps back up to his innards and pools out the openings of his every single pore. He hears it underwater, hears it beneath the tide- and as the flush of excess bubbles pop and blister in front of him, Draco Malfoy hears it in his chest. Then something feverishly drags him from the haze of what he only assumes to be the sweet place between life and death and around him it begs, "_Encore._"

Ladies and gentlemen, Intermission.

Still. It's a strange sort of feeling, being stuck within in the in-between. Draco feels no sense of pain besides the rush inside his ears and the whirl about his veins. And he's floating, too, within the mossiness of his afterlife; pre-devoured, he thinks, inside the fire-filled pits of his all-consuming Hell. But it's the next bit that gets him- for just as the waters swoosh over his eyeballs, right as the heat swells up in his lungs, something hard, strong, and steady suddenly anchors him. Underwater, he feels the brush of hair against the nape of his uninterested neck and, around the blur of blue-green, a great, shaded object wraps tightly around his shoulders. Nevertheless, its the fade of consciousness that he welcomes next; for the very moment he pulls away from the white-light bulb of everlasting death, he just about loses it.

All at once the air runs back to his lungs as _flick, _go the lights on his center stage. _Flick._

"Come on, you stupid git!"

_Flick._

Draco Malfoy thinks how funny it is, to die. Come to think of it, he supposes, it's quite a lot like _not_ dying, all things considered. Granted, the whirl of air in his lungs certainly confuses him and the voice of someone angry only makes him worry. But perhaps, he thinks, the after-life will be a lot more stressful than he'd once considered. Perhaps he'd only saved himself from the easy part and, all along, his audience had been hiding from him the truth about it all. For, maybe death wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Maybe death was just a bunch of time spent in graves and occasionally visiting those in the midsts of their suicides. Draco thinks he's not too sure he _wants _to live (or not live) out the expanse of _that _sort of awful existence; and then a rough hand slaps him hard on the cheek.

"Wake the ruddy Hell up!" says the voice of wrath around him. And _ow_, okay, that one hurt.

It's the sound, though, that travels harshly through his entire throbbing skull. Unpleasant, the vibrations of each enunciated syllable send tiny bouts of blisters in his brain and fry the molds existing there. But it's odd, too; for the earthquake of his stature makes his vision go all funny and he sees the view of what only _looks_ to be the clearing by the pond.

Draco tries to think back to the moment he'd felt dry wind graze his neck, to the second his back had hit the dewy grass below him. It had happened, apparently, but the fuzz of his memory prevents his mind from identifying the exact occurrence. And what he knows now is white- scolding, but chilly white. All intermixed with the voice of the demon that's roused him. While, "F-Fuck," comes the utterance in itty-bitty parts. "Fuck, Malfoy... Stay with me."

Draco doesn't try hard to oblige. Rather, spots of black flash frantically around his iris and he thinks perhaps he's falling until a pair of steady, warm arms lift him up from the ground to press him protectively to a broad, heaving chest. "Professor...?" he croaks wishfully, taking the silence as confirmation rather than much of anything else. "I don't hate you."

And an odd sound emits from the wind all about him as the voice from above clears his throat to tense-up and say, "Err...?" like an idiot; but Draco's too cozy to notice. Instead, he sighs tiredly into The Potions Master's arms and turns his torso so that he's breathing right into his lap. It's not strange or even the slightest bit embarrassing folding into him like a child, for Draco remembers that he's dead and how nothing can even phase him anymore. So with that he permits the slump of his shoulders, turning towards the man's sopping wet stomach and shutting his eyes for the second time in the nightlight. And though he hears the ominous voice through the depths of what seems to be a never-ending tunnel, Draco strains slightly just to catch the very last bit.

"Malfoy," the vibrations say, calling him by his surname in a peculiar sort of fashion that makes his chest ache and his head hurt. "Er... if you see a white light, don't go into it."

But Malfoy doesn't see much light. In fact, Malfoy sees a fairly great mass of just the opposite. Still, when the blackness curls towards him, he moves with the slightest bit of trepidation, smelling thick, wet grass, and a mossy sense of misplaced pond water. Yet he thinks that perhaps he's simply not used to 'The Afterlife' and he finds comfort in the oddly calming echo of The Potions Master's sentences. Though they mold into one thick contraction around the wind, Draco leans into the touch just as he feels the last bit of life rush out of him.

And despite the old saying about flashing lives and relived memories, Draco's curtain call is a great big gust of nothing. From the sidelines of the meadow, his audience doesn't even applause. Rather, one hefty grunt sounds out through the blackness and he's hauled up from the earth before sinking back _down down down down down. _For, in leu of his departure, its the crickets that fade last in the dark.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

_"Play something beautiful for me, darling," comes a voice so soft that it takes several sanctioned seconds just to reach him. "Mummy needs to hear something beautiful."_

_She's sitting in the guest room in the moonlight and its raining. It's been three months, five weeks, two days, and seven hours since the end of the War and his mother looks both fragile and composed altogether, like an actress or a mannequin or something else that's unreadable. But she sits, nonetheless, with her back all stiff and her hands in her lap as she watches, quite calmly, the rigid complexion of her son. Her Draco. Malfoy, just like Lucius; the picture perfect of the offspring that's been tainted by war and traumatized by death. Still. She's stoney and still and it irks him- so much so that it picks, and it prods, and it pressures his being as he sits slightly slanted atop the bench of her lovely grand piano. _

_There's a shock of unexpected electricity that runs through his arms and he freezes for just a moment to avert his eyes from catching the dark, ugly mark that rests there._

_And, "Beauty," he thinks with a dismal sort of indigence, "does such a thing still exist?" _

_He's not too certain he knows much of that anymore, to be honest; and the fleeting sense of diversity only frightens him. Anyway. Atop the roof slips the raindrops and before the glass dribbles the left-overs. As the storm outside continues about the safety of the Manor, Draco Malfoy swallows the heavy sense of confusion in his throat and downs the bitterness with a small touch of determination. When his fingers grace the keys rather gently, its the whole damn living room that lights up with its ghosts._

_But that's beyond the point. _

_Rather, the boy watches with wonder as his fingers move miraculously across the board, trained and suited as if he'd once been a good and proper pianist. He plays her hymns of sweet and simple songs, head cast down above the keys as if he's too scared to look up even once. And yet, each deadpan note slides slipperily down the legs to pool in great, black puddles at his feet. Though Narcissa Malfoy seems none the wiser. Rather, blonde hair spread out around her sleek shoulders, she lets her eyes shut lightly and hums, with all the presence of a specter, to the tune of his pathetically poor attempt._

_Years ago, she might have smiled. __Lucius might have joined her or stood at his son's side with a grin or a heavy hand placed upon his shoulder. But that was the past and this was the 'now'- not the future just yet, but someplace close to the dwindling, daunting end he'd never seen coming. Whereas, before, Voldemort had spoken to them about planting seeds, it was now that the vines had become the overgrowth. The sick, mossy guard that held the world captive. And it was funny how things only seemed ever beautiful or funny or even hopeful. Strange how there was a time before all of this in which the world seemed fortunate to be a part of..._

_Now his mother has been left with only the ghosts, the transparent outlines of herself that once were lovely. There is no longer the unmistakable shimmer behind her pair of upturned stone eyes. There is no longer the spark of electricity beneath every slow, suggestive wink. Back when she was young, and naïve, and twenty, she could have had any man she had ever wanted. Now, she is lucky if her left-over house elves come around to pluck up the laundry on late Sunday evenings. _

_And to himself, Draco poses the question, "What happened?" What happened to her clear skin, and straight teeth, and long lashes? Where had time hidden her poise, and her confidence, and her youth?_

_The image of the woman in the living room before him, it is the picture of someone he does not recognize. It is only the face of someone who has lost everything. For, gone is the money, and the home, and the yard; gone are summer days at the gala and the nights under the moonlight. She's still as she flicks like cigarette ash to the ground, silently brooding behind the sheath of closed eyelids; s__o wonders because he must: Is this their life?_

_Is this the existence that they had been indefinitely damned to now that the world had come to an almighty end?_

_At the realization that she will never again walk the streets with such confidence, Draco's young heart sinks. He wishes to be able to turn the clock backwards, to watch the wrinkles smooth on her face, to see the stress-lines fade. And another minute passes by; another sixty seconds that marks that now they have become just that much older. In his last few moments in front of the lovely instrument, he prays for a miracle. And then, with his fingers weightless upon the surface of the cold, white keys, he hopes for an afterlife far better than his previous existence._

_Yet foreign to the earth like a native, it is the Manor that lives as if a whole new planet, disguised now as his indigenous home. Alien to the land that he's now become a mossy part of, Draco used to treasure it. And he'd hated those people that were trying to overthrow the school that his father had taught him to properly abhor. But what that left was Dumbledore and the half-breeds, as the man had so frequently proclaimed. The Foolish and the Enlightened. Potter and the Mudbloods._

_Anyway._

_As he slides his fingers along the piano, Draco looks at the mess and the ruin that it's brought and he wishes, beyond everything, he could go back. It's a secret, of course, that absolutely nothing that seemed important then seems even remotely important now. At least, not at the cost of this. Not at the destruction of all of this. _

_Back then, everything was blurred and blued and bloated. The contents of those nights were absent in his head and he blinks by the bitter bits of the evenings that he was only half-certain had even occurred in the first place. Everything he 'knew' is now a question to himself, a semi-certainty that he can't quite put his finger on. __And so the Malfoys became the weed. The undesirables, unproductive. It wasn't as if it were _bad, _necessarily, but it definitely wasn't good; and really, Draco's desire to curl up in the wreckage and vanish burned so strongly in his core that he could feel it. Nonetheless, __he thinks such things even when the sky is blue, even when it's roasted orange, and then burns out to its blackened ash surface. __Still. They'd killed and he'd known it. Someplace beneath the deep, dark cellar of his father's precious home, bones lay scattered in reminder of the awful, ugly truth._

_Huh. He doesn't realize he's crying when he finishes until his mother makes a noise and he flinches before moving quickly to swipe the tears away. Nevertheless, she's up from the divan in time to console him, arms wrapped around his shoulders to give a small squeeze and draw back again to the chandelier. She runs her long fingers through his fluff of blond hair and she smiles a fixed smile. But beneath the light of the unsteady candles, Draco can see the presence of deep, premature wrinkles. "Oh, my sweet, lovely child," she says to his image nonetheless, "do not ever forget that you were born with beauty."_

_And she lets slip her gaze to the very front of his face, fingering just there, below the curve of his pointed jawline. "Here," she declares, thumbing the sullen expanse of his cheek, "and here." When she moves, she travels her palm down his arm to intertwine like vines her fingers into his, connecting them- mother and son- for just one moment. "Right here."_

_His hands. His delicate, slender, _feminine_ hands. Artist's hands. Musician's hands. As if she'd been right all along. But Draco chokes back the lump of self-pity in his throat and he wonders. "_What, oh, what, had those hands created? Who, oh, who, were these hands now a part of?"__

__His hands now look nothing like the pair of extremities that his mother had once praised, for the fading sense of her voice is almost completely drowned out underneath the rush of wind lust that fills his ears and the echo of the night against the wood.__

__Flick. Then its the memory that's gone in an instant.__

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Words rush out like whispers as they drift along the open expanse of what Draco thinks must be his empty head.

Faceless, formless figures make sentences with mouths that sit gaping upon their jaws like vacuums wanting to suck him up.

They lay him on a cloud and prick him hard with bee stings; and when the buzz in his limbs die down, they snip away his clothes with scissors and let their fingers roam the expanse of his bare, skinny chest. It'd be embarrassing, he thinks, had he the blood left in his body to flush; but he cannot move and cannot speak. Rather, the world all around him moves in fragments as, blurred, it spins both frantically and theatrically through a vision blinded by excruciating light.

Then someone in the distance touches his lips like a ghost.

They pry open his mouth and stick something foreign down his stomach for good measure.

"Found him in the water," says the voice in the back of the nothingness. "Thought he was dead..."

And the inner-most subconscious of Draco's drifting mind asks, "_Aren't we all?" _but its the inquiry that is left unanswered.

Instead, the end of a long, wooden tree branch pokes him lightly in the front. Under the rush of heavy movement, a muttered incantation fries his innards and, at that, Draco's hand jolts out to wrap around the boney palm of the Potion's Mater. "Stay with me," says the echo at the end of the tunnel. "Stay with me."

But Draco, weak little thing that he is, doesn't.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

When Draco Malfoy wakes up the second time after drowning, nothing makes sense anymore; for, for reasons he can't explain, he can breathe again.

Granted, it's not the sort of easy breaths that emerge from his lungs and float out his nostrils, however he feels the pump of his system as it spills down the confined space of what looks like a clear white, operation tube.

And the cloud's not soft anymore, either. Nor are the sheets comfortable. In fact, instead of something holy, the light in Draco's eyes burns bright to the point of teary annoyance and he gurgles, panicked, to find the steady equilibrium between consciousnesses. "... M-Malfoy?"

Painful, searing flames torch the lining of his bent torso. When a low and miserable groan tumbles out from the blond's spit-encrusted lips, a frustrated curse is heard. Somewhere in the brightness, a cushion seat shifts. Then a blur of jumbled color says, "Malfoy... Are you awake?" And at the burst of sudden sound, Draco's dams open. Hot against the skin of his clammy face, tears slip from the edges of his eyes and roll down the curve of his jaw. Yet he's still against the padding beneath him, and through the water and hair in his face, a mouth in the distance asks him, "Can you hear me?"

"'_Course I can bloody well hear you,"_ Draco's inner conscious tells him,_ "I'm dead, not deaf." _However, what escapes instead from his throat is a full-blown moan and, as his head lulls lifelessly to the side, he mumbles pathetically, "H-Hurts..."

"Well, I'd imagine it would," says the voice, rudely. Draco attempts a scowl for his insolence but after a few short tries, a grimace of pain overtakes the boy's pale face and, rather than looking menacing, his expression crumbles under the pressure in his temples.

But he was wrong, he thinks, about dying. Instead of being painless and easy, he, Draco, had forced himself into an Afterlife full of Hell, and uncertainty, and immobilization. His very Best Friend hadn't warned him, and Father Time hadn't even called. Rather, they'd let him fall beneath the chilly sway of his own demise- now one with the other damned; forlorn, forgotten, and fragmented within the mossy likes of _this_ left-over existence. And Draco wonders if it'll be like this forever. If, for the rest of his days, he'll be forced to lie face-up against the sterile scent of a small, white room, plugged into the Nothingness as if death had never even come at all. And, all self-pity aside, Draco thinks quickly how it's not even slightly fair; how, above all things, he just wanted it to end and, finally, how the sharp jabs in his wrists make it hard to even move. When he tugs upon the unyielding restraints, however, a shock of the most unappealing caliber runs down his spine and he struggles, for a moment, just to successfully inhale.

"OY!"

Calloused, rough hands clasp possessively around the end of Draco's aching arms. It's a strong hold, a commanding hold, and when Draco's head slows down enough to process the too-close figure in front of his sweaty face, a surge of bile rises reactively in his throat. "Shit," says the voice. Then more confidently, it whispers, "_Accio rubbish bin!" _But before he can dwell too much on the familiarity of the sound, Draco's back is whisked up ever so slightly from the cloud so that his head dangles low over the edge. He feels the cold of a round, sculpted basin beneath his chin and, despite the airy feeling of absence on his back, he's sick, shivering, and seeing stars.

Then the voice says sternly, "Don't move," and, for good measure, plunks him back down upon the bed sheets. In the distance, fast-paced and heavy footsteps clatter against the expanse of echoing tile. They leave Draco alone for a moment in his solitude, face up and pale upon the stiff sheets beneath him, and reach out for a cabinet amongst all the white. And, ignored, Draco's sobs wind around the small space to taunt him still in his head. Yet soon enough the steps return and a set of warm, throbbing fingers rap him quickly on the cheek. "Drink this," says the unidentified figure, presenting a cool, glass vile to the opening of his lips.

But for a fraction of a moment, Draco's only waits. Through the blur of his vision, gray eyes desperately pull apart the haze to catch a glimpse- any at all- of the man at his bedside. Nonetheless, the formless lump remains unclear; hand out, two green specs blink in the distance and, with presentation both soothing and powerful, the calloused fingers return to his mouth. "You have to drink this."

So he does. However, the very moment the potion touches his tongue, Draco senses something amiss. Thus, its with a strange taste of bitterness that the liquid slides down to the entrance of his throat. Thin, watery, and subtle, Draco recognizes the tampered drink only seconds before he swallows it whole; nevertheless, before he can properly spit it out, the blur's rough palm slips steadily over the blond's mouth and, with his thumb, pinches the tip of his runny, red nose.

It doesn't even phase him when the boy gives a violent jolt underneath him. Nor does he react when his eyes spill over and his hands tug jerkily at the restraints binding his wrists. Rather, Draco's assailant fades properly into blinding white light as, in turn, its Draco who fades in to the blackness.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

The third time Draco wakes up after drowning, it's dark out, and he's scared, and its raining.

For a minute, he lies where he's been left, head still against the sheath of a stale pillow that smells terribly sterile and tainted, he thinks, as if with disease. Yet it's the _pitter-patter _of the droplets outside that coerce him; for his eyes fall to the window and at the window they spot a man. Slouched against the corner and breathing in slowly, the sloppy figure gives a loud, obnoxious snore and, all at once, Draco goes numb. Though he'd been quite sure of it before, the Potions Master is nowhere in sight. Neither is Father Time or the Secret Cousin, or even the Prank Puller. In fact, aside from the sleeping man at the small bench, there's not a soul in sight for miles within the dark space of what now looks to be a blankly bland hospital room.

And, at his newfound revelation, Draco Malfoy panics. Granted, he writhes as much as he physically can upon the uncomfortable sleeping cot, pulling in vain at the bindings and kicking, with his feet, the stained sheets from the top of his torso. Yet he succeeds in going nowhere and when a sad and hoarse cry fumbles out from his throat to dribble with the saliva at the curve of his collarbone, the snoring suddenly stops.

"Malfoy?" asks the voice, yet again; and it's perhaps the most unspectacular, unremarkable, and unimpressive sound he's ever heard. Not only does the utterance lack any sort of noble Potions Master's quality, but it further falls flat in Draco's ears in the process of deliverance. Nonetheless, flat, fumbling footsteps clamor towards him in the moonlight. When Draco pulls hard at the girth of his bindings, the familiar hand grabs him hard around his jaw. "_Hey_! Malfoy, quit it!" adds the voice, just a bit more sternly. And Draco peers petulantly into the moon light.

All at once, the shapes shift together. Above the man's slumped head, a tuft of messy, brown hair sticks out in all possible directions. Across his torso sits a dirty, dusty sweater. And at last a pair of large, green eyes stand out first among a well-sculpted face, unshaven and blemished in the form of a jagged, lightning scar.

Draco can hardly believe it when he sees it. There, before the bed, stands Harry James Potter- Savior of the fucking Wizarding World and bane to Draco's entire ruddy existence. For a moment, neither of the two opt to saying a thing; yet, as the minutes tick on and Draco's vision clears, it's Potter who seems unable to help himself from pointing out the obvious. "You're awake," he proclaims, stupidly.

Draco takes one more look around the room. He spots a clean, white sink; a bland, white chair; and a hanging, white curtain. Beneath the starch blankets above him, Draco's heaving chest is covered in the hideous display of a cotton, white pyjama garb and, around his shivering wrist, rests the structured paper of a colored, circular guest bracelet. And the only thing not bound to the bed are Draco's legs. Yet, cooked, bent, and aching, they lie out in front of him dumbfounded, as if he'd tried in his sleep to escape without, quite obviously, any such luck.

But its the persisting, transparent hospital tube that Draco thinks to be the real kicker. There, between the part of his lips, the thing travels out from his mouth to disappear, impressively, somewhere into the beeping boxes that stand at the back of his hazy eyesight. Thus, despite himself, Draco can only gurgle at the frowning figure of the Boy Who Lived. "Is this Hell?" he tries to ask, but manages only to produce an unsightly display of drool down the nape of his aching neck.

"Shit," says Potter, flushing. "Hold on." From his back, he pulls out his long wand and, after muttering the likes of a rather complicated spell, the tube vanishes completely. Then, as if he'd completed some sort of marathon, he stands back as if to admire his handiwork. "Any better?" he asks, and the look on his face is disgusting. Flushing, Potter seems almost insufferably _proud _of his good deed, but Draco only gasps with uninterested conviction.

Rather than bother to answer, Draco looks at the Potter-like demon through the newfound panic that overtakes his sternum all over again. He wonders what the boy will do to him, if perhaps he'll fry his innards and roast his torso for good measure. But Potter takes through the frantic terror that shakes Draco's entire core; as, instead, noticing a sense of obvious confusion, he adds, "Malfoy... you're in St. Mungo's. You've been out for four days," then waits for a calm that never actually comes.

Short, fractured breaths rattle the skeleton of the blond at the bed. Double-taking, he blinks through the madness in his mind to readjust himself to the white. And, for a moment he does nothing more but simply sit. However, when neither Potter or the hospital space do anything spectacular to prove the statement wrong, Draco makes a quick surge to rise from the bed, only to be predictably stopped by the restraints holding him in. "Release me," he commands the other, eyes narrowed and lips stiff in a manner he'd hoped to be daunting enough.

"Er..." says Potter, making no such movements to do any such thing.

But Draco wrinkles his nose and gives yet another tug to the God-awful bed straps. "Release me, you insufferable twat!"

And in an instant, Potter is back up in his face, fingers latched around Draco's wrists in what seems something like a pathetic attempt to calm him. "Oy!" he shouts, all fire and importance- just the way Draco used to hate him back in school. "Quit it! You're going to bloody _hurt _yourself!"

And it's the urgency in Potter's voice that makes Draco angry, for he tugs quite impressively at the bonds just to show him he could really give two shits about what Harry Potter thinks is best for him. Thus, despite the heaviness in his head, and despite the wooziness in his chest, Draco Malfoy kicks and flails and struggles while, from above, Saint Potter only stares at him like a bloody moron. "LET- ME- _GO_!"

"_Fucking..._" Within a matter of seconds, Potter presses his weight upon Draco's wrists and squeezes over the bindings, and the bracelets, and the clear tubes in between. Rudely, he ignores the petrified yelp that emits from the body down below him and, through the barrier of gritted teeth, asks calmly in Draco's ear, "Now, are you going to stop moving?"

And Draco, stubborn little thing that he is, makes sure to physically spit when he hisses heatedly back, "Like Hell."

"I'll get the Healers," Potter threatens. "For fuck's sake, you listened better when you were half-conscious and drooling all over yourself!"

Draco remembers the night before hazily, feels a sting of horrible embarrassment as he recalls, to his terror, the blurry vision of Harry fucking Potter feeding him some sort of drought and watching him slip into unconsciousness. "_Bastard!" _he accuses, horrified. "You _drugged_ me!"

Thus, the grip on Draco's wrists loosen. Above him, Potter blanches and, rather quickly, the explanation tumbles from his lips as if only slightly humiliated for having done so at all. "I gave you something to help you sleep," he says hurriedly. And then, to add insult to injury, adds, "you ungrateful little twit!"

But Draco watches him angrily from his spot at the bed. Blond hair construed across his pointed face, the ex-Slytherin doesn't even have time to scowl before he tosses his head back and gives a spiteful sort of laugh at the mere thought. "_Ungrateful?" _he spits, still slightly straining against the bindings at the ends of his arms, "What in God's name should I be grateful for _you_ for, Potter?"

The pressure on Draco's arms snap away. Then _stupid_ Potter makes some _stupid_ backwards scramble and, standing upon the edge of his heels, seems someplace in between the likes of punching Draco Malfoy square in the jaw or drugging him all over again. "Oh, I dunno," says the mouth on the very face that Draco has grown to abhor for years and years and _years _on end, "Perhaps for saving your life?"

"Saving my-"

"Or if you don't recall, you'd have been swimming with the bloody fishes!" Potter leans back, breathes out once, and glares at Malfoy as he says it. However, Draco's angry expression falters to turn a shade of bright, burning red; and, despite the victory, it deflates Potter again in an instant. "Malfoy-"

Nonetheless, Draco's not one for sympathetics or hurried, wasteful take-backs. He's not one for useless apologies or boys-turned-men with persisting bouts of Hero Complexes far too large for their own good. In fact, Draco Malfoy is quite certainly not one for anything Harry James Potter and, though the look on his face reads heavily with slight sorrow and a tinge of regret, Draco spits back, "Fuck you," and all goes quiet again. "Tell the Healers I'm done here. I want to be discharged."

"That's highly unlikely." It's the first time Potter speaks after having said the wrong thing beforehand. Having forgotten all about his previous slip up, he does nothing to make up for his most recent jeer, either. Rather, the boy sighs and runs a hand through his head of dark, messy hair. He looks, in the glare of the hospital room, as if he hasn't slept in days.

"What the bloody hell are you on about?"

"You're on suicide watch, Malfoy," clarifies the other. "You'll be lucky if they give you a bloody _fork_, let alone an early release from St. Mungo's."

And Draco can't move, breathe, or even react properly. Instead, his head spins with the revelation that hits him hard, like a ton of falling bricks. He hadn't died, hadn't even come close; for he'd been dropped off in a hospital, tied to a bed, without his clothes or a wand or a bloody clue about the days previously. And every simple movement sends pain into his wrists, traveling up his arms like bolts of aggravating lightning to reach his temples and drip like fountains from the openings of his pores. He hates the sterile way that the room looks bare around him, hates the wafting scent of overwhelming sedative in his throat. But most of all, he hates the fact that it had all been because of that _stupid _bloody Potter, who shouldn't have even found him at all in the first place.

However, Draco stiffens his back and readjusts himself to appear daunting, despite any minor setbacks. He ignores the dumbfounded way Harry blinks back at him and, instead, threatens darkly, "Untie me right now, Potter, or I'll-"

"What?" retorts his challenger, unfazed, "glare at me sternly from a distance?"

And, truly, Draco Malfoy hadn't expected that one coming. With one, heart-felt tug, he yanks again at the restraints and, predictably unsuccessful, growls at the hardened way the things don't even budge.

"You know," sighs Harry Potter from his spot just feet away from Draco Malfoy's bedside, "this would be a whole lot easier if you'd just stop moving."

It's his comment, however, that does not having the same effect he'd perhaps been aiming for. Rather, with a venomous sort of stare, Draco ignores the lifeless way that his hair falls back in front of his face and, through the fringe, hisses back, "It'd be a whole lot easier if you stayed the _fuck_ out of my life!"

And this time, it's Harry's turn to freeze. Feet flat upon the tile of the room, the boy doesn't move a muscle, save to blink baffled in Draco's direction. Thus, it's with an uncertain sort of glare that he regards the bed-bound Malfoy, eyes still behind the frames of his glistening spectacles, to flush for a moment and regain himself with as much composure as an aristocrat. "Right," he says gruffly, looking far more pissed-off than humiliated. "Nurse?" Without the courtesy of giving Draco another look, Harry swiftly turns on his heel and heads towards the small, white door. He places his hand on the frame of it, sticks his scared face out into the corridors, and hollers, "Nurse!" until the sound of heavy feet come running.

"Mr. Potter!" says a soft, simple voice in the far off distance, riddled with far too much respect and just a tiny bit of infatuation that makes Draco's eyes roll. "What is it?"

"It seems that Draco Malfoy has finally woken up," reports Potter, back stiff and boulder-like before Draco's only means of escape. "He's been yelling like a madman and if I don't say so myself, he's come to in a horribly delusional state. I suggest a sedative."

And just as Potter makes his swift and steady exit, the fools rush dutifully in. Then they prick him with needles, watch his eyes roll backwards, and as Harry leaves the ward on two, strong feet, the men leave Draco Malfoy to rot.


	3. Apparation

**Vonne: **Sorry for the lengthy update. I've been working on a couple of pieces that I'd hoped to have up by now and they're just getting lost someplace in the madness. I hope you enjoy the third chapter! Please, _please _don't hesitate to leave me your thoughts/comments in a review. Critique me, do whatever you'd like, just let me know what you think and I'll keep writing. Promise! Thanks so much for all of it so far, everyone. I appreciate the time and effort so much.

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><p><strong>Orchard Omniscient<br>**Apparition

* * *

><p>"Draco."<p>

Select things surge back with the pronoun. First, the pillow, then the sink, then the bindings. In the corner rests a small, square chair and out the window shines the sun through the curtains. And no one claps, no one whistles, and no one cheers. Yet it's the strange, soft feeling that makes his body feel faint; so he scans the room and in the brightness finds a figure. Though it's not the eyes, or the nose, or the _expression_ of the thing that's clear, but instead the entire lump of it all at once. For, sloppy, fat, and grinning, the heavy outline across from Draco Malfoy looks almost like Vincent Crabbe. Then looks a lot like Vincent Crabbe. And then looks exactly like Vincent Crabbe.

"Draco."

Draco thinks its quite strange how much the hallucination actually sounds like him, too. Perched against the sill of the window pane and illuminated by the rays of the morning, the boy's burned face shines perfectly, as if oblivious to the fact that he'd died. As if, perhaps, he had not found anything peculiar about his presence there at all. Still. Grinning, the ashen thing leans forward. His large, sausage fingers cling the sill for support and, up close, he pulls a look of repulsion. "Good _God_, mate," asks Crabbe, just as blubbery and just as deeply as he would have in his actual lifetime, "what has he _done _to you?"

And Draco asks, "Who?" because he really can't quite remember.

Then everything settles in cliches. Rooms spin, ceilings shrink, and bulbs fry. When the image of Crabbe morphs his face all up again it's with a slight sort of chuckle that he explains, "That _Golden _Boy, Potter, of course! Looks like he had you bloody lobotomized, if you ask me," and then steps up into the spotlight for a closer look. But the smirk around his cheeks persists and, upon further inspection, turns toothy. "Draco," he thus continues in a voice riddled with so much sarcasm that it reeks with the essence of undeniable irony, "your mother would be absolutely horrified!" And then for good measure he adds, "What would Pansy think?"

But instead of considering Pansy Parkinson and all the possible opinions she may have of his bed-ridden manner, Draco Malfoy lets his mouth open before forcing it shut. There is, nevertheless, the slightest taste of chemicals on his tongue and he thinks of responding back with something cynical before taking back the thought of arguing with the hallucination at all. Drugged or not, Draco thinks conversing with the dead is probably not the best idea. But the dead, nonetheless, converse with him anyway.

"Please tell me you're going to hex the living shite out of him when you snap out of it," says the phantom in what sounds at least to be of a somewhat more serious tone than before. "Draco," he scolds, "For the love of _God..._"

In the back of his mind, Draco Malfoy pieces together the specifics. He'd stepped into the clearing and he'd plunged himself into the water. Two hands had lifted him from beneath the surface and an angry voice above him had commanded him to wake up. When he did, he was lying on his back in St. Mungo's and Harry Potter told him that he was on suicide watch. Then he'd recommended an anesthetic.

Bastard. Draco promises himself that when he _does _snap out of it, he'll kill Potter first and then go right back to merrily killing himself, thank you very much.

Anyway. For now, he thinks he'll sleep off the medication.

With a miserable sort of moan, Draco lets his head fall away from Vincent Crabbe and the searing sun. He presses his itchy eyes shut and counts to ten as fast as he can before he forgets how and rambles off in a fit of close-enough syllables. It's strange, nonetheless, how the prickle in his fingers shoots down to his toes and he succumbs to it still, every so often catching the faintest bit of saliva as it trickles down chin and winds up someplace in his pillow.

In the back of his head, he wills the image of his Best Friend to go away. Groggy, disoriented, and plagued with the vision of his own relentless subconscious, Draco scrunches up his nose, squeezes his eyes tight, and mumbles a mantra of, "Go away, go away, go away," before checking to see whether or not he'd managed to make the boy disappear. He hadn't. There, as bright as day, remains Crabbe; smiling sadly with a hint of expected intelligence that is, for that matter, quite strange considering the circumstances. "This is no side-effect, mate," he whispers and a bit of smoldering ash falls casually from his left ear. "This isn't just the drugs talking."

And though Draco wants more than anything to disagree, he keeps his mouth shut and instead focuses on the bindings. He'd only been in St. Mungo's twice and the first time he'd been faking it. With a non-existent pain in his arm, he'd had a nice, cozy sleep in a private room to himself. Vincent Crabbe had shown up in the form of flesh and bones and Goyle and Pansy snuck him chocolates back from Hogsmeade. There'd been no fogginess and there'd been no restraints. There'd been no drugs and there'd been no Potter. It's enough to make Draco want to cry but then again, he refuses to do so in front of Crabbe- figment of his imagination or ghostly apparition or neither. Still.

What he does is bite his lip instead and, with his back to the image, whispers, "Please, please, please," as if manners might do him some good. When they don't, Draco doesn't have enough strength to regret the action. But in the heat of the strange moment, the blond lets his eyes hover over to Crabbe, and with a grain of salt, takes him in gently. He looks exactly the way an overdone slice of meat might look. Or a slab of ham. All blackened up and blinking out the charcoal from his lashes, the Best Friend's smile is a broad, expansive gleam in the distance. He gives Draco not a look of understanding, but instead of utter enjoyment; and with a shake of his big, burley head, says, "Merlin, you are going to shit your pants when you see me in the morning."

And Malfoy, sedated little thing that he is, doesn't even bother to ask what the hell an odd comment like _that_ is supposed to mean, anyway.

Rather, the remaining image of Crabbe leans forward again with an airy sort of voice and curious sort of splendor. He glances once over his shoulder and peers into the hallway as if to make sure the coast is clear. Then he says, "You know, a long line of Malfoy men apparently attempted suicide at one point in their lives," as if the topic were as appropriate as mentioning the weather. "I suppose," he continues, "this was bound to happen sooner or later."

Thus, in nonchalant fashion, Crabbe lifts his shoulders into a shrug, perches his heels up at the edge of the bed, and relaxes in a way that makes Draco feel stiff. When he speaks, a faint trail of smoke seeps from his lips and dances around the opening of his wide, hollow nostrils. "Rumor has it that before your grandfather, Abraxas, got dragon pox he tried to throw himself off the end of a seventeen story tower. Dunno how he survived that one. Heard something about his wife finding him mid-way down, though. I guess the Malfoy women have always been just a tad more composed, wouldn't you agree?" And though Draco knows nothing about any such line of suicide attempts, he keeps his eyes closed and relishes in the peculiarly pleasant notion of his stomach.

But perhaps its the medication that makes Malfoy's head spin with the details. He tries (in vain) not to picture the image of his grandfather falling seventeen stories through the air, only to be greeted with the scene of the moon, the stars, and a great, billowing blond man plunging several feet to his untimely death. Huh. He thinks his father never told him that his own father had succumbed to the fate of the family. And what that leaves Draco with is the wonder of whether or not Lucius Malfoy had come into play with any of it at all, as well.

Still. He guesses it doesn't matter anymore. Now that the man is six feet deep and all that, anyway.

Crabbe, however, carries on with the specifics. Bed-side manner absolutely out of whack, he drives his hand through his hair, looks completely smug, and reports, "Your great grandfather, Brutus Malfoy, ran into his own sword ten times," while waving all his meaty fingers through the air for good measure. "I bet that certainly took the mickey out of him. It's mental that Potter had to be the one to stop _you_, of course. What the bloody hell was he doing in the woods for that matter, anyway? Oh, look- speak of the devil..."

And then all at once, the voices stop. Instead, soft, prolonged footsteps enter the room behind him and it's the cautious and uneasy way that they carry out through the hospital room that makes Malfoy's body hum and throb altogether. He couldn't move if he'd tried, so he doesn't; and with a fearful sort of quality, he prays that the drug-induced version of Crabbe had been wrong with the arrival.

_"Not Potter," _thinks Malfoy. "_Not Potter." _And low and behold, Harry bleeding Potter stands still above the cot.

"Err... Malfoy?" asks the cretin, looking sleepless and ragged in a vile red jumper and a pair of leather trainers, "How're you feeling?"

And Draco resists the urge to leap down his throat and strangle him from the inside. The sedatives, however, spread a nice, warm feeling in his innards and he sinks low into the mattress like a tenant. "Wut isth this poshun?" he inquires, out of curiosity and nothing else.

Though Potter, rather blank, merely blinks. "Potion?" he asks, looking guilty. "Oh, that. Well, I reckon the Healers have given you a calming drought. And perhaps Benzodiazepine. But that's all precautionary-"

"- My arse," intergets Crabbe, but Potter doesn't even look up.

"- I told them to give you some Dreamless Sleep, too," he says awkwardly instead. "I'd noticed you'd been having some rough dreams last time." And the nobility of the act only falls flat with the delivery because Draco doesn't want to think about how Potter might have noticed his nightmares the last time. In fact, Draco doesn't want to think about Potter watching him sleep at all.

"Tell him he's a prick," advises Crabbe. "Tell him to fuck off."

But Malfoy extends his slender fingers and marvels at the euphoric way the bed sheets feel full against his knuckles. "Well," mutters Potter, "uh, it should only last a couple more hours." And he stands there as if he's waiting for something unexpected to happen. Nevertheless, Draco gives a slight moan and lets his head fall back against the pillows. He wants to swat Potter across the face but his arms feels boneless, like a snake's; so he watches his long digits with a gaze curious enough to be a newborn's as Harry Potter fidgets and Vincent Crabbe glowers in the corner.

"He did this on purpose," Crabbe tells him, still clutching the window ledge for dear life. Or, afterlife, Draco supposes. "He did this on purpose just to see you make a bloody fool out of yourself, Draco. You _do_ realize that, don't you?"

And it's not as if Draco really realizes anything, anyway. Too far infatuated with the splendid feeling in his bones, he relishes not in the oddity of the evening, but instead the marvelousness of it all. As if he'd never tried to off himself in the first place, or started seeing his dead friends, or if Harry Potter hadn't shown up. As if it might have even once been considered a good day.

At least, so long as the lovely feeling lasts.

Thus, still pressed against the threadbare blankets, he fumbles with the hospital tubes, takes a steady glance towards the window, and says, "Shuddit," in the most belligerent sort of tone he can muster. It's not directed at anyone except the apparition, of course; but typical Potter takes typical offense. And, _"Typical,"_ thinks Draco, watching Crabbe watch Potter watch him. How bloody typical.

"Excuse me?"

The sound comes from a bit of a distance and a pang of happiness sweeps through Draco's chest at the notion of Potter having backed far, far away. However, when he swivels his head around, he finds that he has merely taken it upon himself to make himself comfortable. Leaning forward in the single hospital chair with a look of obnoxious concern on his face, The-Boy-Who-Lived looks The-Boy-Who-Shouldn't-Have up, down, and all fucking over before asking, "Are you okay?" like an idiot behind his pair of large, foggy spectacles. "They shouldn't have given you so much, I suppose. Hermione says it makes some people a bit loony."

Which is, for that matter, easy for Potter to say.

Cozy and most certainly not drugged, he sits high and mighty in his sweater, looking warm. There's not an ounce of disillusion in his eyes and, alert, he has the almost intolerable glow of a morning person.

"God, what a twat," snuffs Crabbe, and Draco thinks it might not be so bad, agreeing with the hallucination. It is, of course, _his _subconscious speaking, even if it does sound a little bit like Vincent.

So, "Twat," agrees Draco.

And, "Atta boy," exclaims Crabbe.

"Shit," swears Potter.

All in all, Draco doesn't understand why Potter is the one swearing. It's not as if _he_ had come to bound to a bed in St. Mungo's with his worst enemy standing over him and no place to escape. He wonders quite seriously how The Golden Boy might stand to the challenge as a strange sort of defeat takes his face, replacing the consideration at once. He thinks, "_Fuck this. And, you know what, fuck Poter, too." _Why wasn't _he_ the one seeing ghosts? Surely he'd take one look at their looming figures and heroically send them away with a flick of his golden wrist. Or perhaps he could call the Minister to do the job. Last Draco had heard, the two were on friendly terms and, for that, he intones, "_How nice." _With all the glittering galleons Potter has in the bank, he could right about _pay_ the bloody ghosts off.

But the notion makes Draco Malfoy sick to his stomach.

"With all the money Potter has in the bank, he could buy a whole Quidditch team," Crabbe says. He looks at Malfoy and raises a bushy brow, face plump and red beneath the soot and ash that covers it. There's nothing extraordinary about the post-life Crabbe except his witty attitude, but Draco overlooks it to scowl at the boy appropriately.

It's true, he thinks. Potter could probably buy a whole Quidditch team. If he wanted, he could buy truck-loads of women and have them dance the can-can merely for the sake of his simple amusement. "Probably two truck-loads," insists Crabbe.

Yeah, Draco agrees. Probably two truck-loads. Son of a bitch.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Dashingly caring, bravely admirable hero that he is, Harry Potter kindly leaves Draco Malfoy to his crazy in solitude. He washes in, out, and falls flat, left upon the shore of his own broad imagination as, "What a fucking _trip, _man," laughs Crabbe. And Draco has to agree. It's quite nice.

To pass the time whilst in his ridiculous 'watch', Draco engages in a splendid staring contest with the wall, so as to not look directly at Vincent Crabbe. When his eyes start to sting and water a bit at the tips, he snaps them shut and pretends to count sheep so that his ex-classmate's rueful chuckling stays faintly within his ear drums. However to Draco Malfoy, sleep does not come. Rather, he considers the Malfoy men and the countless suicide watches _they'd _surely been put under, wondering what a blow it might have been for the likes of _their _pride; for surely, he thinks, he had very little left to maintain, now that they'd washed, fed, and managed his piss throughout the fading hours of the afternoon.

Anyway. Draco lets himself be pushed, pulled, and poked by the Healers that slip in and out. He watches glassy-eyed and faded as they lift up his limbs and readjust the bindings roughly. The thick, ugly mark upon his left inner arm, he supposes, does him no favors for fairer treatment. Though nevertheless, Crabbe does all the insulting from behind them.

Strangely amused, he cocks an eyebrow and comments, "Look at _her," _when a fat, frowning, aide comes in and adjusts the tube in Draco's throat. It doesn't matter that Draco can barely see her; but the vibrancy of Crabbe's voice swivels around the hospital room like an echo, loud and oddly intimidating. "She looks like a right_ potato_,_" he _howls, and then for good measure adds, "You know, she's probably seen you naked."

And a bright red blush overtakes Draco's pointed face, making him flush with heat so suddenly that it actually _hurts. _

"They've probably _all_ seen you naked. I mean, _someone _had the task of undressing and redressing you, you know," Crabbe continues. He seems unbothered by the blond's horrified expression, though the potato-woman does as well. Nonetheless, the flappy boyish apprehension on his face stands out wildly from the crook of the Healer's neck and he smiles, despite the sunlight, to rest his chin upon her shoulder in a manner that makes his the flesh bulge out into one, formless blob. The ugly Healer doesn't even flinch.

"How many galleons would you wager," asks Crabbe still perched there, "that Potter's seen you naked now, too?"

And this time, Malfoy chokes on the thick saliva in the back of his throat. He glares at Crabbe, scandalized, and ignores the click of disapproval from the direction of the fat Healer, who wipes away the drool on his chin and lets his frazzled blond hair hang low in his eyes without the mercy of adjusting it. Still. Crabbe scrunches up his squat nose at his friend's predicament and exclaims unimpressed, "Christ, Draco, you're as flushed as a bloody school girl."

"Get a grip of yourself, would you?" he advises begrudgingly, "You're starting to look like one of the patients from the ward above you- and trust me, I just looked around up there. Needless to say, they're absolutely barmy."

"When did you become such a prat?" Draco asks, once the Healer leaves him. But he doesn't expect the smile on Crabbe's face to form so hastily at the accusation. Rather, in a curious way, the boy beams brightly and gives a modest, familiar shrug. Perhaps, Draco wonders, he'd taken it as something of a compliment.

"Dunno, mate," Crabbe says finally, a slight glisten in his eye. "Weird thing is, I _still _don't play with a full deck."

"Huh," says Draco, on the verge of consciousness. "Well, you can't have everything."

And when the nurses come in, he smiles at the strange serenity of it all; for it's peaceful- so peaceful- and he thinks that, perhaps, it might always be this peaceful.

When the lovely potion wears off, however, he doesn't remember the meaning of the word.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Picture Harry James Potter at the beginning of what is undoubtedly the end. He's a deer in the headlights, but there is no highway, there is no driver, and there is no road. Rather, curtains rustle, cameras flash- and he's by himself, and he feels like a bloody idiot. However, Harry Potter is inexplicably right where everyone expects him to be, though he feels not the sense of overwhelming goodness that he's been promised and instead there's a big wave of sloppy sickness in its place.

Anyway, outside it's Monday in the afternoon and it's just about raining. It's the kind of Monday where nothing but blues emits from the speakers of some hypothetical radio- where Bill Withers mourns the absence of the sun and, all the while, the clouds leak teardrops upon the glass of the tinted shop windows. It's the kind of Monday that passes off as night, the kind of Monday that the fog in the sky succeeds in blocking out everything, even space. And it's strange, really, how the universe warns him in such a way, for it suggests the impending exit of his figure at the plastic like a psychic. _That_ kind of Monday, _that _kind of afternoon, _that _kind of storm.

"Mr. Potter?" demands a voice, tightly.

He's sitting slumped against his knees with his dark hair a mess and his glasses in a slanted heap across the bridge of his nose. He's wearing the same saggy sweater from the day before and his trainers are wet and squishy with pond water. It's impressive, even in his mind, to see how he'd managed to fall asleep like that successfully, and though he hasn't moved from his spot in the stingy corridors of St. Mungo's, Harry overlooks it all to glance up and instead greet an angry-looking Healer in the light of the wasted evening.

"Mr. Potter," says the Healer again. She's in white and looks like a balloon, all boated and cranky. Harry can see through the light fabric of her untouched garb and her funny-colored bra rests chokingly around her baggy, blemished flesh a manner most unappealing- though for the life of him, Harry tries not to blush.

He can't quite help but think that he should have seen it coming, though. It's funny to think he'd even lasted the night in the first place. Save for the strange conversation he'd had with Draco Malfoy not too long ago, he'd half considered leaving him to rot before his insufferable conscience took over and forced him into the hallway chairs with magnetic conductivity. The warm feeling of a deed well-done, however, hadn't come. Or at least, it most certainly hadn't yet; and Harry lets his eyes dart up to make contact with the ugly Healer's eyes instead of her obnoxiously ill-fitting undergarments.

"Dr. Bosworth would like a word," she tells him, looking rather unamused; and Harry has to think: _Finnes Bosworth, PhD, Head Healer,_ before even making the move to stagger onto his feet. The woman places her hands on her wide hips and keeps her mouth pinched shut. There's a big, sticky stain on her breast pocket and deep black bags under her narrow eyes, but she surveys him with every bit of expectancy stitched sternly on her face. Certainly, Harry decides, she'd had to deal with Draco Malfoy all afternoon.

Still. He keeps his distance when he follows her down the corridors. To prevent himself from stumbling, he keeps his eyes trained on the back of her lumpy head and makes a point not to look inside of any of the hospital rooms against the doors. When they reach a rather large one at the end of the lengthy, white hall, the ugly Healer stops abruptly and motions him inside with a flick of her wrist. "Here you are," she says quickly and huffs down the hall without as much as a second glance.

And before Harry take the easy way out and run away, a loud, friendly voice from the inside of the office exclaims, "Ah, _Harry!_ How wonderful to see you," before spelling the door shut and smiling broadly from the desk at the window. "Please, do have a seat."

In the light, Finnes Bosworth looks absolutely nothing like the image of a doctor. Rather, his lips shimmer in the candle light and his eyes twinkle behind the small lenses of rounded glasses. He's old, physically uninteresting, and inexplicably daunting; but he beams broadly at the image of Harry in the doorway, hands stretched out in a large gesture to the empty seat across from him. "I can imagine," he says in a manner that's a bit too friendly, "you've had a rough night."

"Yeah," Harry admits, but thinks that all things considered, Malfoy's had one rougher.

"Tea?"

"No. Thank you."

There's a strange bout of silence that makes Harry wish he'd accepted. Nevertheless, Bosworth regards Harry properly, still smirking with his hands held together and his papers in an organized heap on the desktop. He wonders what they've done with the old Head Healer- the one who'd known him before any of the War business and had raised her eyebrows at him whenever he'd ended up at St. Mungo's all bloodied up during Quidditch season.

Of sorts, he's a prophet. Except not. Not really.

It still makes him uncomfortable, being the hero that everyone considers him to be. Truth is, he's Harry. Just Harry. And he looks, feels, and acts the same way he has since the day he walked out of Hogwarts with the knowledge that nothing would hurt and everything could be well. Anyway, it's been twelve tantalizing months. Since the insanity, Ministry officials have rebuilt Hogwarts and lessons have started up anew. As it goes, Harry had purchased his own flat, decorated the interior and, when it'd all been said and done, stepped back to take in the result of what'd been eighteen uneasy years in the making.

"_The Boy Who'd Lived and Lived and Lived and Lived and Just Wouldn't Stop Living..."_

Still, it excuses nothing about the likes of where he is now or what he's done in the past because all of it has done a whole load of nothing except come back to haunt him in the form of one slimy, pointed ferret. Draco Malfoy, he'd been called, but in all reality it's just a whole load of shite. It doesn't matter that they'd hated each other in school or that he'd ripped his bloody chest open on the floor of the girl's darkened bathroom, doesn't matter that he'd let a werewolf into Hogwarts and watched as the wisest man Harry had ever known fall to his death from the Astronomy Tower to the darkness. "_Of course it doesn't_," Harry tries to tell himself. But somewhere in the back of his head, a harsh voice laughs, "Bullocks._"_

And even Kinglsey swears up and down that the whole ordeal is just a temporary and small affair of post-war specifics.

Right, well, candidly Harry thinks he's doing that sort of afterlife wrong, but he swallows the lump of large bile that rises reactively in his throat just to drop the matter entirely. So he signs up for the Auror program and saves people's lives as he's expected to. They assign him the task of monitoring those deemed 'dangerous' after the war and somehow, the entire list of Malfoys wind up under his watch. It's all fine and dandy until he spots the youngest in the clearing by the pond. He'd been talking to himself in absolute hysterics and, unseen in the dark behind the brush, it takes one look at the figure before him for Harry to realize, _"Fuck." _He should have never signed up for this in the first place.

"Mr. Potter?" asks Bosworth, bringing Harry back to the room, and the hospital, and the flickering white candle between the two of them. He looks only slightly disturbed by the tired expression on the boy's blank face, but regains himself to lean even closer to the desktop. "I was wondering if you minded discussing the issue of Draco Malfoy for a moment? You're the Auror that brought him in," he says. Harry opens his mouth to tell him he's only just begun his training, but he cuts him off before he can get the sentence out properly. "It's all just standard procedure."

"Oh," Harry blinks, "Yes, of course."

And, with that, the man takes the initiative to start right into it. "As you know," he says, shuffling through the papers and bringing out a folder with the familiar name labeled across the front, "Draco and his family were placed under the Auror Watch program at the end of the war. Granted, they were not aware that they were being monitored, but it now seems that the steps were beneficial... as it saved the life of their son. The issue now, however, is where the boy will be moved to from here."

"Moved to?" It's one of the slight technicalities that Harry is unaware of. Certainly, he'd figured Draco would be kept at St. Mungo's for the remainder of his suicide watch, but the transfer of his person from hospital to hospital was not something that he'd considered beforehand. "Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you mean," he starts, looking a bit uneasy when the smile fades slightly from Bosworth's lips.

Then Harry shifts in his chair just a bit, feigning casualty with a roll of his shoulders. Someplace behind the barrier of the office door, a loud, primal scream echoes out around the corridors, but Healer Bosworth doesn't even flinch. Instead he says carefully, "Now that there is evidence that Draco Malfoy is a danger to others, he will not be allowed back home until he completes the required rehabilitation program."

Harry has never heard about a rehabilitation program. Even when the Ministry had briefly explained the Auror Watch details to him, they'd failed to mention such a thing. Thus, a slightly sudden shiver runs up and down the length of his hunched spine. He tells himself that the discomfort is for the sake of his ignorance alone, and not for the well-being of Malfoy. "I still don't understand," he says nevertheless, "Malfoy tried to off himself, not anyone else."

"And that alone," says Healer Bostworth, "speaks multitudes about the current state of the boy's mentality."

Still. Something strange erupts in the pit of Harry's stomach. He clenches his fists around the fabric of his trousers and breathes out a long, shaky breath before shoving his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with the end of his index finger. Then his eyes catch the growing trickle of sweat that has been beading at the end of Finnes Bosworth's hairline. "What does any of this have to do with me?"

"Ah," breathes the man, looking at the large door. "Well, as the Auror assigned to his family, you and I are supposed to discuss the patient's moving arrangements." But before Harry can open his mouth to politely refuse the obligation, the door behind him bolts back open and the ugly-looking Healer sticks her head through the frame all over again.

"There's a bit of a problem," she says despite the distinctly wild shouting from hollow hallways behind her.

And when Harry hears an outraged voice cry out, "Don't_ touch_ me, you disgusting swine!" he has to agree. In fact, all things considered, he thinks that there might even be just a bit more than one.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Crabbe disappears when the Healers come in.

He's sitting on the window sill with his back against the white wall and he glances up at the uniformed men before sinking back into the sunlight. Needless to say, it makes Draco Malfoy feel not the least bit prepared for confrontation. Still, the Healers give him very little choice in the matter; and when they pile into the room, surround the sterilized bed, and draw their wands, Draco thinks he might go mad before giving in and going mad regardless.

"Don't _touch _me, you disgusting swine!"

Then Harry Potter waltzes through the door and, crazy composure aside, Draco considers the fact that perhaps he's been doomed to the likes of horrible company to begin with. It doesn't stop the Golden Boy from gawking, however. Mouth wide open and still dressed in the clothes he'd arrived in the day before, Potter stares back at Draco Malfoy as if _he'd _been the one who had just seen a ghost and there's nothing authoritative about his stature whatsoever. Rather, in the frame of the small door, Potter resembles more of an annoying onlooker than the whole Savior of the whole bleeding Wizarding World (or whatever it is they call him these days).

Draco Malfoy, however, just sees him as a good-for-nothing, spying son-of-a-bitch.

"I'll bloody kill you!_"_

With full, overwhelming force, he lunges towards the figure with his hands outstretched. It's in a quick sort of manner that Malfoy pulls himself an impressive several inches towards the edge of the mattress, but the Healers swarm back around him as Harry, jumping slightly, takes one, large step backwards towards the unopened door.

"They've told him?" he asks Finnes Bosworth out of the corner of his mouth; and the man nods once from the way back of the watch-room.

In the meantime, the uniformed men wrench Malfoy's jaw open, pour another potion down his throat, and slam their palms over the gaping hole that is his wet, flapping mouth. When Malfoy wriggles his wrist free to slap them away and a plethora of black-colored liquid runs down his chin to stain the sterile sheets of the hospital bed, he turns his gray eyes to Harry and looks appropriately deranged as a rumbling, animalistic growl emits from the depths of his swollen throat.

But Harry, who has seen the likes of pixies and winged-keys and _dragons_, is certain he's never seen such a display in his entire life.

"My _father,"_ Draco threatens darkly, "will have your head!"

"Your father is lucky to even have his own head," snaps one of the Healers. And the comment, though briefly spat, seems to take the ex-Slytherin off guard.

It is, of course, his only subtle mistake. Frozen by the cold delivery, the blond goes down easily with the next shove of unrestrained wrists. Quickly, the Healers wrench his jaw back open, uncork a second vile, and spill an impossibly significant amount of it past his teeth. Then they pinch the end of his pointed nose shut, wait until his cheeks turns a funny shade of blue, and release him only when his throat bobs with the suggestion of consumption. Thus, when Harry glances back up again, the fight in Draco Malfoy is gone completely, replaced instead with the likes of a drug-induced calm and just a tiny bit of something else.

Then the watery, gray eyes catch his own once; but for some reason, Harry looks away.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

_"The door!" someone shouts hoarsely and high-pitched. "The door! The door the door the door!"_

_The door. Harry sees it in the distance out of the corner of his eye. The big, tall, unyielding door- the same door to the castle and the same door from the inferno. The all-consuming, Crabbe-made oven. The Room of Requirements. Even in his dreams, Harry wishes he had more time._

_But it's the diadem, of course, that's still the most important. When he searches for it this time, the fire envelops his very soul and roasts the end of his broomstick like a barbeque. Harry can smell the scent of burning flesh underneath his nose- can sense, for that matter, the remains of Vincent Crabbe, lost somewhere in the depths of the Hellfire below them. __Draco Malfoy's hands are still tight around his stomach. His fingers are still pierced into his spleen. And, despite the roar of the flames and the whoosh of the wind around them, he still sobs for the lost soul of his flame-broiled friend. "C-Crabbe!" cries the other, "N-No, no, no, no... C-Crabbe!"_

_He risks his life for the pointy-faced ferret. _

_He dives through the heat and swoops him up from the clutter of furniture to let him live for one last time. _

_Nonetheless, when Harry's fingers find the tiara and he dives through the exit, Draco Malfoy fumbles off from his broom and crawls towards the stoney wall. The door, however, is no longer. Yet still he asks the nothingness, "Crabbe? Crabbe? C-Crabbe? Crabbe? Crabbe?" and when no one bothers to answer, he pounds the thing harshly with his fists and draws blood from his palms like he means it. "N-No..."_

_The screaming does nothing to Harry's health at first, but after a while it starts to hurt his head. Draco kicks so hard at the rock that the stubble flecks off from it and Harry starts to think, "You know what? You want that bastard back so much, go get him," and gives the Slytherin one, heavy shove. Then the Room opens up again and in goes Draco, back into the madness, back into the flames. _

_But from his spot on the side of safety, Harry simply stands there and watches. Thus, the pale face turns red, gets blisters, and even pops. His gray eyes shine bright and his wind-swept hair crack crack crackles within the heat. And at last, the screeching form of Draco Malfoy goes quiet. His handsome face turns to ash, and when he doesn't even look human anymore, he finally disintegrates completely. _

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

It's two o'clock in the morning.

Harry Potter is not in his bed or anywhere in the house for that matter, but instead upon the same white tile within the same white walls, speaking with the same white-uniformed receptionist he had when he'd brought the body in in the first place.

"Name?"

"Harry Potter."

"Room?"

"Two-fifty-three."

"Patient?"

"Draco Malfoy."

Though he doesn't know why he does it, he does it anyway regardless.

* * *

><p><strong>Vonne: <strong>Reviews make my day!


	4. Haunt

**Vonne: **Hello again! I promised a fair amount of you that I wouldn't forget about 'Orchard'; so, _finally,_ here it is- chapter four! Please, please please be kind and leave me a review!

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><p><strong>Orchard Omniscient<br>**Haunt

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><p>In hindsight, Harry probably shouldn't have gone back to St. Mungo's. He does, though, nevertheless.<p>

Hands deep in his pockets and eyes half-lidded behind the sheen of crooked, plain spectacles, he reaches the door marked 253, summons up all the courage of battling mermaids, facing giants, and vanquishing Dark Lords, and turns the metal knob as if the lot of horrors were waiting there behind it. With a soft click, the door re-locks itself behind him and once inside, Harry meets shaded, rainy gray, a dripping, faulty tap, and a well-confined square of monotony at the center. The only sign of Malfoy is the pale, blond tuft sticking ruggedly from the sheets; and Harry has to admit, "Okay, maybe this is partly my fault," before deciding, for the most part, its actually his fault entirely.

It's not exactly guilt that washes over him, but the sick wave of semi-pity unsettles him all the same. "_Malfoy!" _he whispers.

The figure on the mattress doesn't move, though. Instead it rests suitably- a small, pale presence within the chaos of far too much white. It's just as if Malfoy were made to be insane; and it almost assuages the sympathy Harry feels for the whole 'committed patient' aspect of the prat's whole ordeal. Almost, of course- but not quite.

"Malfoy," he repeats, still standing barely a foot from the doorway, "Oy! Malfoy!" There's something chilling about the hollow breaths that emit from the spot before him. Lethargic, the spent sounds of Malfoy's exhaustion fade off into uncharacteristically small sighs that sound strangely helpless; and, for a second, Harry thinks about the zoo-kept serpent behind the glass at Dudley's birthday. "Goddammit, Malfoy," he swears on purpose, simply to cancel out any sort of godliness associated with the fact that he _had_ been the underlying cause of this entire mess. "Wake up."

He doesn't, the bastard, but instead a sleepy groan floats out from the blankets and Harry thinks, unconscious or not, Malfoy only makes the nose in order to further torment his inner conscience.

Yet, despite everything, he can't help but consider the fact that perhaps he really _is_disrupting the peace. Every slide of his foot makes squeaks against the tile; and the infiltration seems almost unforgivable, like a sin. Malfoy, in the meantime, doesn't even fidget. Staring holes into the sheets, Harry thinks the Slytherin-sized mound looks more pathetic than actually human and he reaches the edge of the white hospital bed contemplating removing the layer of blankets or simply leaving him hidden there beneath them.

For good measure, he tries again. And this time he finds that the covers responsively shift.

"Bugger off, Crabbe," says a sloppy voice. The fluffy blond head retracts back into the white and then, as if on accident, reveals itself against the pillow. In sleep, Draco Malfoy looks piss-faced drunk. The purple circles around his eyes make them hollow, and the unending faucet of his nose makes sticky puddles against cotton. "You're such a pest," Malfoy mumbles incoherently, and instead of waking up, he squeezes his eyes shut tightly and buries his pointed, red-tipped nose into the cushions.

"Potter."

Malfoy predictably doesn't budge, but Harry jerks around so fast that he almost gracelessly loses his balance on the tile. However, notably prepared, he whips out his wand and stands subconsciously between Draco and the bed, glasses slanted unthreateningly at the bridge of his nose. The unspoken hex on the tip of his tongue, however, falls flat at the face of a stern, yet surprisingly shocked-looking, Kingsley Shacklebolt. "Ahem," coughs the Minister of Magic, "Good evening to you, too, I suppose."

"Minister," breathes Harry. Why he's speaking in hushed, whispered tones is beyond him, but the soft sighs of Malfoy at his back sends shivers up his spine; and for some reason, not doing so seems somehow disrespectful. "I-"

"Snuck into a hospital in the early hours of the morning?" finishes Kingsley. His deep purple robes look vibrant in the moonlight, but the raised brows on his face are daunting enough to spread a fast blush on to Harry's otherwise drained face. After a few short moments, however, Kingsley manages to pull his expression into a far lighter one. With a smile, he says, "If I didn't know any better, Mr. Potter, I'd say you were still back in your school days," and Harry laughs nervously in response.

"I couldn't help but feel responsible," he says out loud, explaining himself.

For a second, Kingsley studies Harry with a stoney expression. He lets his large brown eyes wander to the blond mess of hair protruding from the bed sheets and shifts his weight studiously. He doesn't speak in quiet tones, but the intensity of his voice is not unkind. "Mr. Potter," he says finally, breaking the awkward silence, "Mr. Malfoy is here on his own accord. Brining him to St. Mungo's was only part of the job you were assigned to do. If anything you saved his life."

Harry, however, remains unconvinced. He considers the conditions of Malfoy's situation with a heavy heart, still uneasy about the idea of having to have him transfered from hospital to hospital. Sure, he detested the spoilt brat with every bone in his body, but the war was supposed to be over. People weren't supposed to be living like this.

He says, "Malfoy certainly doesn't see it that way," and Kinglsey quirks his brow curiously.

"Yes, well, be that as it may, the Ministry certainly does."

On the small bed, Draco Malfoy moans softly. It's the first sound of distress he's made in the presence of the Minister, but only Harry flinches. Kingsley, on the other hand, takes several steps forward and strides past Harry swiftly. Lifting a large, dark hand, he pulls back the covers strewn across Malfoy and peers down at the pale, pointed face, twisted with the stress of an unkind nightmare. Silently, Harry wonders why the Healers had opted not to give him any Dreamless Sleep. Then, quickly, he considers the fact that perhaps Malfoy had been doped up on enough drugs already.

Nonetheless, its Kingsley who draws out his wand. Wordlessly, he places the tip of it at the side of Malfoy's perspiring temples; and, awestruck, Harry watches the lines smooth on the front of Malfoy's face. His brows relax themselves gently, and the deep frown evens out into a simple, sleepy line. Whereas before the blond had looked ill and horrified, the childlike expression of innocence on his face almost catches Harry off guard. Draco burrows his nose deeper into the cushions, letting out a small, infant-like whimper; and Kingsley drapes the covers back over his face, hiding him completely.

"Mr. Potter," says the Minister, turning back around, "Why are you here?"

"I'm not exactly sure," replies Harry, honestly. Sure, he'd said he had felt responsible before, but the act of sneaking in to Draco Malfoy's hospital room had, admittedly, been a bit out of character. Running a hand through his messy black hair, Harry lets out a long, exhausted breath and scans the white lump of Malfoy all over again. Perhaps he'd only come for reasons that were selfish and not entirely respectful in the first place. Perhaps, for that matter, he'd only come so that he could finally sleep well at night. "I guess I just thought I could make things better."

"Draco Malfoy is in professional hands," Kingsley assures him, and his body blocks the image of Malfoy entirely.

"But-"

"Harry," interrupts the Minister, "go home."

So he does.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Or, at least, he'd intended to.

Instead, Harry walks down the too-white hallway and just as he passes the slightly open door to Bostworth's office, he comes face-to-face with the stressed-looking Healer himself. "Harry!" exclaims the man, "just the lad I wanted to see!" and, like that, he is dragged into the room and strung along his couch.

The Healer looks at him with a nervously wide smile and his fingers twitch strangely around the steaming hot cup of tea that he's holding. "Err-" starts Harry, looking apprehensively from the door to the doctor, "how have you been, Mr. Bostworth?" He thinks it's perhaps the most polite thing to ask, but Bostworth flinches at the question, the corners of his mouth almost itching to relax properly again.

"Oh, _Harry_, not good," breathes the man, "not good at all, in fact. It's actually your latest case that's been keeping me up! The Ministry wants the transfer papers for the Malfoy case in by the morning and they're pushing for Whittingham." Bostworth lets out a long, haggard breath and smoothes his hands over the top of his unflattering head of semi-hair. He eyes Harry quickly, takes a jittery sip of his tea, and shuffles back to his desk, moving around papers with shaking hands. "It's your signature that I need, you know. Once you've acknowledged the move, they'll be off my back."

He's talking a mile a minute, but Harry studies his jerky movements. The anxiety within them makes Harry anxious as well and, for a second, he only stares back, taking it all in. After a long while, however, he manages to ask, "Whittingham?" and Bostworth's head snaps back up. He wears a curious expression on his old, gloomy face.

"Unfortunately so," he says, morosely.

Something about his frown makes Harry uneasy. There's a slight shimmer of pity in the man's eyes, and he stops filing through the papers to pause timidly, glasses twinkling in the dim light of his office. "Sorry," says Harry slowly, mainly in timid apprehension for the bad news that he can practically _sense_ coming. "I'm not familiar with Whittingham Hospital."

"Ah." Almost as if he can't hold it up any longer, Bostworth's expression droops. Against the shag of the carpet, he shifts his weight awkwardly and sets the papers back down on the top of his desk. For a second he stares out the slight opening of his office door and, waving his wand, he spells it softly shut, leaving the two of them in a rather uncomfortable display of darkness. "Tea?" he asks in a small, yet serious voice.

And this time, Harry decides that perhaps tea would be the best idea. "Sure," he says, and he watches Bostworth fill a spare mug up with water. "Thank you."

"Not at all."

For a moment, neither of the two say a word; and, uncertainly, Harry sips from his mug and shifts against the soft cushions. He wishes he could be anywhere else in the world right now- for the distressed expression on Bostworth's face makes him wish he'd have never asked about the hospital at all. And yet, peculiar as though the silence may be, the man takes one step forward, leans his back against the front of his desk, and sets his own mug down on a stack of important-looking files. He says, "Ugly business, Mr. Potter, ugly business" and this time, Harry really _really _wishes he'd stayed back home and left Draco Malfoy to rot.

It's not as if they were ever friends.

"U-Ugly?" asks Harry, in spite of himself.

Bostworth nods once. "Quite," he says. "It seems the Ministry has decided to place Mr. Malfoy under the watch of the most professional wizards in the business. As the terms of the protection program, Draco was supposed to refrain from harming anyone- himself included- in the times after the end of the war. And yet, as you know, Mr. Malfoy..." Bostworth's voice fades off into an uncomfortable trickle of a sound. Despite his profession, it seems as if he doesn't even want to say it.

So Harry supplies the rest of the sentence for him. "- Tried to off himself."

"Yes," says Bostworth. "That." He lets out a quick breath, regains his composure, and adjusts his stance just a bit. "Well, for... 'trying to off himself' Mr. Malfoy has broken the rules. And that means that the Ministry is permitted to take responsive action."

"So they've decided to send him to a different hospital?"

Bostworth freezes slightly. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose just a bit and reaches back down for his tea. "Err... well, in a sense. Mr. Potter, Whittingham is not exactly a _hospital _as it is an institution. Under the terms of Mr. Malfoy's program, as I'm sure you're well aware of from the basis of his trial, Mr. Malfoy is to be committed."

Committed.

Harry's not exactly sure that he's heard him right, but the word echoes around the room like an annoying little fly that just won't leave him be. It takes the mickey out of him instantly and, though he'd have once _killed _for a time when Draco Malfoy could be hauled away to some institution, the nauseous ache in Harry's belly comes as almost an unpleasant surprise. Really, he doesn't know what to think, but the strange feeling of bile that rises up in his throat is something new and, for some reason or another, the thought alone makes him dizzy.

Committed. Like a mad man, Draco Malfoy is going to be dragged off to some goddamn institution.

"For how long?" is the only thing that comes out of his mouth; and Harry is only vaguely aware of himself speaking when he asks it.

"Unfortunately, that is still up to the Ministry to decide."

It takes a long while for Harry to garner up the mindset to say anything else. Rather, he almost forgets the steaming hot tea in his hands and the cushions of the couch beneath him. Instead, the only thought that runs through his mind is that of Malfoy, clad in white, strapped down to a stretcher of un-exquisite material, drooling disgustingly down the front of his pale, pointed chin. He says over and over in his drug-induced state, "All your fault, _Potter._" And only a little part of Harry thinks that he deserves it.

Somewhere in the back of the hallway, though, Albus Dumbledore reminds him, "_Not a killer."_

"No." It's out before Harry has much time to stop it. Granted, he's not exactly sure why he's standing up for the well being of Malfoy, but he is, and he flicks his eyes up to Bostworth with the heavy expression of not going down without a fight.

"No?" asks Bostworth.

"No Whittingham," explains Harry. "Healer Bostworth, I'm not going to sign those papers. There has to be another option."

The deep flush of red that overtakes Bostworth's face spreads quickly. His eyes, however concealed behind the sheen of his spectacles, glisten wildly, and he almost looses his composure against the end of his desk. All the stress that he had shown previously returns at once, and again he touches the pathetic ingrown strands of hair that stick out unflatteringly from the perspiring crown of his head "Mr. Potter," he says, almost pleadingly, "I can assure there's nothing! The Ministry must keep an eye on him. Whittingham is perhaps the only hospital that will take him, and, as the Auror in charge of his case, you are the only one that can issue it!"

And a thousand things run through Harry's mind at once. He thinks of all the people that died in the war and how he'd always hoped their sacrifice would have made the surviving world better. He thinks that life was never supposed to end up like this, how the out of control and unfair aspects of the world were never supposed to live on. And the numbness of the night creeps up on him slowly, rising in his legs and spreading in his ears; and he almost can't even hear Bostworth rambling on and on around him, stammering over explaining the details of the unjust Ministry regulations.

Ex-Death Eater, says Bostworth.

Danger to the society, says Bostworth.

The Healer breathes loudly, anxiously, and he holds the unsigned files out in front of him, a bobbing, airborne quill just inches from the curled-up edges. Sure, Harry considers dropping the matter entirely and giving in. He considers reaching over, grasping the quill, and drawing his name, short and sweet, along the shimmering gold line. It'd be easy, so easy. And he almost does it, too. "... Have to sign the papers," says Bostworth.

"And if I don't?" says Harry.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Draco Malfoy breathes in slow. He lets the sterile air of hospital medication and overly cleansed countertops fill his nose and squeezes his eyes shut to the unbearable headache in his temples. It doesn't help that his wrists are strapped down to the metal sides of the bed, or that his uncovered feet are almost blue with the nippiness of cold, but when he peels his eyelids open and finds himself face-to-face with a tall, redheaded blur, he all but passes out all over again.

"You're quite ugly when you sleep, has anyone ever told you that?" says Fred Weasley, hands on his knees and head cocked to the side smugly.

Draco jumps as much as the bindings will allow him. He screams a silent and sore sort of scream, and slams his eyes back down to hide the freckle-faced image of the certainly dead, yet certainly happy-looking, Weasley twin.

"What's a matter, Malfoy?" continues the apparition amusedly. Even with his eyes closed, Draco can still hear him. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Malfoy doesn't say another word, but instead busies himself with drumming his fingers on the chilly side of the bed bars. Madly, he hums a tune to himself and ignores the soft giggles, still persistently sounding off around him. They've given him too much medication, drugged him up beyond reasonable repair. All the morphine in his system has made him barmy, of course; and that alone is responsible for the hallucinations.

"Not a hallucination," inerjects Fred.

"Shut up shut up shut up," demands Draco.

A soft creak, as if the ghost were actually taking a seat, meets Malfoy's ears. It's silent for a second, and Draco almost sicks up at the thought of going permanently mad. He clenches his fists, trying to break free of his bonds, but cries out unsuccessfully at the tightness against his wrists.

"You know," says Fred over the whimpering sound of Draco's protest, "I know you're a prat and all, but you really have no reason to be so rude, Malfoy. It's disrespectful. And I'm dead. And you shouldn't be disrespectful to the dead or the dead will haunt you, and you don't want that, do you?"

All things considered, Draco thinks the dead have already started to haunt him.

"Oh," agrees Fred, "right."

When Draco opens his eyes, Fred Weasley is sitting perched on the edge of his mattress. There's a kind, gentle look in his eyes, but there is also no mistaking the mischief there, either. In death, it seems, the boyishness had never really left him.

"Boo," says Fred appropriately, and Draco screams before fainting accordingly.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Draco doesn't dream this time because this time they wake him up and pump him with calming sedatives before unstrapping his arms and directing him down the hall.

The large, muscular men holding him upright jolt him into a staggering sort of balance and they don't even bother wiping the spit from his cheeks or the tears from his eyes. Instead, Draco clamors down the corridors and blinks by the blinding lights and peering eyes of the other hundred madmen standing watch. Some of them shout, "DEATH EATER SCUM!" but when Draco opens his mouth to retort, a fountain-full of saliva dribbles from the opening of his lips instead of anything sufficient enough.

He feels strange, but then again, normalcy seems too foreign a concept anyway.

"Rot in Hell," instructs someone from the back of him. Malfoy sees the shapeless blur bend over and whisk off a slipper before it hits him square in the jaw and fumbles to the ground by his feet.

"No throwing," dismisses the men at his side.

A couple of spare Healers rush off to the offending tosser, but Draco isn't given the satisfaction of watching them inject him with punishment of his own. Instead, they steer him around the corner and past the ogling eyes, into a whole different room. And this time, the whole cooped up place is almost frighteningly too dark.

"Patient DM25300," they say.

Though watery lashes, Draco peers around the room. Faceless, formless figures stand in clumps all around him; and it's almost too glaringly white to make out much of anything else. "Mr. Harry James Potter," says a calm voice somewhere else.

Draco doesn't see him, but the bright, un-ignorable image of two green eyes meet him half way through all the chaos. There's something sympathetically pitying about them, and they glisten intensely behind the annoying sheen of ugly spectacles. Huh. For a minute, Draco wants to reach out and touch him, but the twitching jerk in his fingers is involuntary and the fact alone makes his cheeks flush. Stupid Potter. The boy who lived and lived and lived and just wouldn't die already.

"Malfoy." The green eyes look at him funny. Chilly air signifies the movement of his hand, and Draco flinches when Potter touches him; the warmth of his fingers makes him uneasy, off-balance, and the strange question of, "Are you alright?" arrives slowly, barely processing in the fuzziness of Draco's head.

He thinks, "Am _I alright?"_ and then someone lifts up his hand and shoves it forcefully into the heated confines of Potter's. Draco's hand just lies there, limply compliant within it. For a second, however, he simply stands across from him. Supported by the two strong hospital men at his side, Draco lets his eyes flutter shut and breaths in slowly through his nose. Each inhale feels like ice to his lungs. Every exhale makes the voices all around him fade a little bit faster.

"Malfoy?" Potter asks him, tightening his grip ever so lightly. The concern in his voice is strange, but Draco opts to ignore him partly because moving his mouth feels too tiring and partly because, despite everything, he still hates his guts. "Malfoy... can you hear me?"

Several footsteps creak around the room. With his eyes closed, Draco can only feel the presence of another being, but the tip of something pointed and long at the center of his fist is most certainly that of a wand. "Do you, Mr. Potter, agree to monitor the actions of one Draco Lucius Malfoy for the currently undisclosed time of enrollment in the Ministry's watch program?"

Potter is stalling. Within their unusual union, his hand slightly loosens. "I..." he starts. "Is he alright?" However, despite the inquiry, no one in the room bothers answering. Rather, they repeat the original question in a daunting, forceful voice and Potter swallows hard before saying that, yes, he does.

"And, therefore, you acknowledge the fact that he is hereby your responsibility to maintain and overlook?"

Draco feels sick. There's something not right about all of this, but it feels better to lean against the men's convenient grips instead of speaking out anyway. Potter, however, does all the speaking for him. His voice says, "... Yes," and at that very moment, Draco gets nauseous.

Nevertheless, Potter's hand pulls away from his and the men at Draco's side let go. For what feels like hours, no one says a word; but Draco's legs feel limp and useless and he sways just inches from Potter, threatening to loose his balance completely.

However, only after the bile actually escapes his throat and lands with a thick, slimy thud, on Potter's shiny leather shoes, does Malfoy feel the slightest bit of accomplishment.

It's short-lived, of course, but brilliantly enough, its the first feeling of elation Draco Malfoy feels before passing out all over again and this time leaving the Golden Boy graciously to the madness.

* * *

><p><strong>Vonne: <strong>Motivate me to continue? Pleaseeeee!


	5. Lights

**Vonne:** If you're reading and enjoying OO so far, _please _let me know. If you hate it, also let me know. My apologies for such a short chapter. This one took me a long time to write. I've been so busy, but I don't think the next chapter will be this short. Thanks for understanding and thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks for everything else!

Okay, now...

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><p><strong>Orchard Omniscient<br>**Lights

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><p>"Ron. Stop."<p>

Hermione Granger stands over the couch with her hands strewn tightly across her chest and an equally as uneasy look plastered to her face. Harry notices that her hair is an outright mess, her eyelids are a deep shade of purple- and he probably shouldn't have disrupted her fireplace at four o' clock in the morning to tell her that Draco Malfoy had ended up drugged, unconscious, and forcibly confined to his living room for and undisclosed period of time that only God knows how long would last. He'd panicked- carried Malfoy through his own Floo (sick running down the hospital uniform and all), and practically threw him on the couch as if simply touching him were contagious. Harry didn't want to catch Crazy. And Draco Malfoy was a fucking lunatic.

"Ron. Don't."

Bent over and frowning, Ron Weasley retracts his finger from the pale slab of Malfoy's cheek. He checks his fingernail suspiciously, following his girlfriend's request to 'please, quit poking', and makes a face. Then he turns back to Harry with his diagnosis: "He's gotta be faking."

"Honestly, Ronald!" Hermione gives Ron's hand a little slap and the matter temporarily rests. "What in Merlin's name could Malfoy possibly be faking?"

"Dunno," says Ron, shrugging. "Why's he look like that?"

"Like what?" asks Harry from a distance. He's leaning against the doorframe by the fireplace, keeping his distance. The 'Unbreakable Vow' part of his night hurts his head too much; and he can thank that damn Healer for jittering him up with all that tea.

"Like, a dead body," says Ron, wrinkling his nose. "Bloody reeks like one too."

"Well I'd imagine so," Hermione says, irritated. "He _has_ been strapped to a bed for 72 hours..."

Ron struggles with the blooming smile that plays on his lips. Coughing slightly, he leans back and quirks his brow at Harry. The look on his face is far more amused than it is piteous. "Gross," he says, just a tad too happily.

On the couch, Malfoy doesn't even move a muscle. He rests instead with his long arms dangling off the side, one wound oddly across his chest and the other just centimeters above the carpet. Every so often, Harry spots his torso rise and fall with silent, shallow breaths; and if not for that small miracle, Harry actually _would_ have presumed him deceased.

After a long while of just staring, Ron asks, "Where do we take him?"

And, at this, Hermione snaps her head over her shoulder to glare at him incredulously. "What?"

"Well surely you don't suppose he's staying with Harry," Ron says, shrugging. He looks a little bit tired, too, and the sleeve of his nightshirt dangles in an exasperated way over the fingers of his left hand. He says, "Right, Harry?"

But Harry doesn't look him in the eye when mumbles incoherently back, "Er... not exactly."

Across the way, Malfoy's hand looses the battle with gravity and hits the ground with a thud. On impact, the drool dangling comfortably at the edge of his parted mouth runs down his pale, pointed chin and mingles with the dried vomit on the collar of his gown. Harry winces, but doesn't move. A small part of him wants to grab his wand and put him out of his misery.

"Harry," says Hermione, over the repulsed sound of disgust from Ron at her side, "what did you do?"

For a moment, Harry runs through a list of excuses silently in his head. Of course, the very moment he'd stepped through the Floo, he'd been asking himself the same thing; and yet, the very image of Malfoy makes him sick to his stomach. For one reason or another, looking at him only makes Harry want to keel over and sick up his dinner, too. "They were drugging him," he says, in his defense. "They were going to transfer him to some _asylum!_" When he tells them about the Vow, he keeps his back facing Malfoy as if a simple glance might turn him to stone. "I don't even think he had any idea what was going on when we were doing it."

"Oh, Harry," says Hermione.

"You can't be _serious_," says Ron. "Harry, you are aware that this is Draco bleeding _Malfoy _that we're talking about?

"Ron, stop- Harry, what happened to Malfoy wasn't your fault. You were only doing-"

"My job, I know," Harry interrupts. He feels his face heat up and fights down the urge to be annoyed. He certainly doesn't want Draco Malfoy living with him; and in fact, once the war had ended, he was happy enough simply having the bastard out of his life. "Kingsley already informed me."

Hermione smiles warily at him in a last effort to keep the peace. There's a hint of worry in her eyes, and Harry pulls his own gaze away to glance reluctantly back at Malfoy. "Anyway," he says again, "now it's my job to look after him here."

"You've gone barmy," says Ron.

Harry pushes his glasses up to the very top of his nose. He puts his hands in his pockets and leans across the doorframe- still safely keeping his distance. Hermione tells him quietly, "Floo anytime if you need us," and then kindly reaches over to place a kiss on the side of his cheek. "I'll do some research in the morning, okay?" she promises.

"Yeah," says Harry. "Thanks, 'Mione."

They leave him not late after and Harry stands in the doorframe, unmoving. He stands there for what feels like hours; and when his feet start to hurt, he busies himself by walking to the kitchen and making himself a cup of tea for when he drags himself back and stands there all over again. When he gets tired, he doesn't even bother _Accio_-ing a chair. Instead, he just sinks to the floor and puts his head against the wall, watching watching watching. And Malfoy, who perhaps _had_ died from the sheer monotony alone, doesn't even wake up the next morning.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Turns out, Malfoy's a rather heavy sleeper. That, or he really had been given one injection too many.

Harry wakes up around seven and sees the blond in the same position he'd been slumped in the day before. He tiptoes around the couch and makes himself toast in the kitchen. Then he pours himself a cup of coffee and walks to the doorframe to sip it there in silence. Malfoy doesn't budge, so Harry grabs his parka from the coatrack and throws it around his shoulders before stepping out the door and running errands out in Hogsmeade just to keep himself busy.

When he comes back around noon to find that nothing's changed except his once fresh smelling living room now reeks with the poignant scent of vomit, Harry has to cover his nose with the collar of his shirt just to keep his bloody eyes from watering. "Malfoy," Harry says loudly and still admittedly distant, yet with all the disgusted desperation in the world, "wake up."

And it's no surprise, of course, that he doesn't. Nevertheless, Harry takes time by shifting his weight back and forth beside the telly. He's about to turn around and forget the matter altogether, but Malfoy's chest suddenly stops rising and for the first time since his arrival, his brows knit together in subconscious distress. It takes Harry two seconds to realize it before it even happens.

With three panicked lunges, Harry yanks Malfoy up from the couch from under his armpits and narrowly misses the spray of vomit when it hits the carpet by his sneakers. Malfoy lifelessly sags in his grip like a rag doll, and he doesn't wake up but instead falls forwards against Harry's shoulders, blond hair plastered to his dripping, sweaty face. For a moment Harry doesn't even move. Bent over, stunned, and supporting what is perhaps the most ill person he's ever seen in his entire life, he stares horrifiedly into Malfoy's face before breathing out slowly and lifting the body completely into his grip.

It's not surprising how light he is, either. Jumbled in Harry's arms like a mockery of a newly wed, Harry glances down at Malfoy to notice how skinny his ex-classmate had actually become. The collar of his shirt slides down to reveal the protruding collarbone at the end of his neck. With his head bent back and crooked against his arm, Malfoy's cheeks look sunken in, more so even than in their sixth year. And Harry has thought he'd looked so sickly, then...

He feels a slight ping of pity for Malfoy again and the notion unsettles him so much that he has to look away, just to counteract the feeling.

Fortunately, Harry reaches the bathroom quickly. Once there, Harry places Malfoy by the edge of the toilet and lets his head balance against the porcelain. He grabs an old shirt by the laundry, throws his ruined one in the sink, and walks back into the bathroom to find Malfoy, unsurprisingly, still crooked in the same position as when he'd left him.

Nonetheless, still holding his breath, Harry shuffles Malfoy back up into his arms and staggers to the edge of the tub. He doesn't even bother shutting off the running water. Instead, he puts Malfoy into the bathtub, still fully clothed, and stands back in attempt to admire his handiwork.

It doesn't work. Malfoy doesn't even look remotely appealing. On the contrary, actually, because, dosed in the now vomit-laced water with his head tilted back against the sides, he really resembles something of a drowning animal than anything human, anyway. And, for that matter, even looking at him disturbs Harry- who had seen his own fair share of disturbing things over the course of his lifetime. The bathtub water just sways. Draco's head slides down and his chin hits the soaked end of his messy chest.

"Goddammit," swears Harry. He goes into the kitchen to make himself more toast, only to sick it up himself half an hour later.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Fortunately, Harry pulls himself together enough to finish cleaning Malfoy and spare him from getting too pruney in the bath water. He arranges him in a spare pair of nightclothes atop the guest bed and doesn't watch him lie there, but instead returns to the living room with his wand to spell the carpet so forcefully clean that he almost burns a hole through the floorboards with the effort.

When he spots the cover story on the morning's paper only to find that its about Draco Malfoy's attempted suicide, he gives up on reading altogether and slinks to the couch exhaustedly. Harry flips in a droll spectacle through the afternoon broadcast on the telly, watching anchormen and orange-skinned teenagers spit the same blah blah blah for hours until he falls asleep on the cushions; and when he dreams, he dreams of blackness.

o O o O o O o O o O o O o

Draco Malfoy wakes up on the second day to a thundering headache and far, _far_ too much red. He sees it when he cracks open sleepy eyes, and the color bleeds through teary vision- violently, after having just experienced the previous amplitude of too much white. For a moment, Draco thinks he's finally, mercifully, met death; and yet, the very notion of his hopeful salvation falls flat upon the moment that he moves his crooked fingers slightly in the bed sheets. Ow. If he _had_ died, then he had very certainly gone to Hell.

But Draco's already fallen for that one before; and, swallowing, he decides that, on a more probable level, he more than likely wasn't dead and instead, cursed. Into a state of permanent immobilization, for that matter. He decides that such shitty luck would suit his shitty life, anyways; so to test the theory, Draco moves one arm along the cushioned lining of the mattress.

It hurts. My God, it fucking kills. And so, instead of attempting to pick himself up, Draco simply lies there beneath the covers in fear of _actually_ dying- death, he thinks, by the daring action of minute movement. He holds his breath until his cheeks turn blue and when his next plan of action leads him to open his eyes again, the first thing Draco sees is Fred Weasley- yet again- as if he'd been waiting for him to wake up since the night he'd so rudely made him faint in the first place.

Fred beams and says, "Rise and shine, darlin'!" and he kicks his swaying feet like an excited child, too antsy to sit the bloody hell still.

Color drains from Draco's face. He goes very, very still on the mattress. His stomach does flips, and he thinks he might get sick again. Wasn't he in _St. Mungo's_ jut a bit ago?

Nevertheless, gray eyes search the new (obnoxiously red) room. Panicked, he locks in on the first heavy object he can find, ignores the overwhelming nausea in his gut, and rips it from the dresser. Sitting upright, Malfoy hauls his weapon over his shoulder and instead of appearing menacing or even just a tiny bit threatening, a tormented whimperer trickles out from the back of his dry, swollen throat.

"A lamp, Malfoy?" laughs Fred. His face is pink and he looks like he might burst from the sheer ridiculousness of Draco's facial expression alone. "Careful with that, you could kill somone." Then he unexpectedly swings his body off the dresser and approaches the end of the bed, hands to his chest as if he really were afraid of the possibility.

"Stay away from me!" shrieks Malfoy. And he means it, too. The bastard just doesn't take him seriously.

Unthreatened, Fred moves swiftly closer to Draco. He opens his mouth to say something, though nothing except a fit of giggles sputter out.

"Malfoy!" says a voice that's not Fred's from across the room, "Over here!" Malfoy swivels his head around to the opposite side of the bedroom, only to be met with the flash of a prying camera. "Ugh," moans Collin Creevey, who brings the thing down from his eyes miserably, "You blinked! Do that again!"

Draco reels back so forcefully that his arse hits the ground with a thud and his body tangles catches in the blankets. For a moment, he just sits there; and then Fred laughs so loudly that the sound practically bounces off the walls and slaps Draco, hard, in the face.

"_Bloody!_- one more time!" insists Creevey, repositioning his face against the back of the camera, "I didn't get that one, either!"

Then Draco notices a pink haired blur at the side of his vision. Nymphadora Tonks leans her head to the side, mulling things over, and says to Crabbe, "Not all that graceful, is he?"

"Now, Mr. Malfoy," murmurs Professor Lupin, who looks as dirty and as grimy as always, "if you would just calm down for a _moment_-"

But Draco _can't _'calm down'. His hands are shaking too much and his heart is beating too fast; and untangles himself from the sheets to clamor to his feet, eyes wide and wild at the vision of The Deceased. He thinks this can't be happening. He thinks, despite his consciousness, that he must be dreaming- and that somewhere, back in the reality of the rest of the world, he was still safely restrained away in the confines of that obnoxiously white room in St. Mungo's.

Fred Weasley looks at him amusedly. He lifts up his shoulders and remarks to Tonks, "Actually, he looks a bit ferret-like, if you ask me."

Crabbe grunts, "Get stuffed, Weasley."

And Fred says to Draco, "Here ferret, ferret, ferret..."

Draco musters up all the strength he can and hauls the heavy lamp over his shoulder. He looks back at Fred, who steps closer with one hand balled up into a fist as if he were offering him a treat. Then he looks back at Crabbe, whose face is still ashy and burnt beyond the unamused expression stamped across it. Creevey just reloads his camera. Lupin searches his breast pocket for a bite sized piece of chocolate. Tonks just smiles and Draco thinks, before he throws his weapon, that they actually _do _kind of look alike...

_BAM!_

The tasteless lamp hits the wall behind Fred with a loud bang. Instead of doing the intended and hitting the Weasley twin, however, the thing miraculously surpasses him and breaks into a million pieces.

For a split second, Draco just stands there in complete shock. All the color drains quickly from his face. He doesn't even think he can breathe, his head is spinning so much. Fred says, "You bastard!" and he uncurls his fist to survey the shattered remains of the equally as deceased lamp. "You can't just throw lamps at dead people!" He runs his hands up and down his torso as if checking whether or not he might have been maimed; and if Draco weren't so catatonic, he might have caught on to the sarcasm.

Nevertheless, Hallucination-Lupin takes several of his own steps forward, though admittedly in a more gentle manner. He slips his head to the side and surveys Draco slowly; and, for one reason or another, it appears as if he actually considers the approach he might take in speaking to the boy at all. After a few seconds, he tries, "Mr. Malfoy, if we could just speak with you for a _moment_, perhaps this whole thing could be... err... a bit less-"

"Amusing?" suggests Fred.

"Overwhelming," corrects Lupin. He reaches out to touch him, and it's perhaps his first real mistake.

The moment Draco sees Lupin's very grimy- and very dead- hand approach him, he reels back, once again falling over the bundled up sheets and ramming his back into the wall. "STAY AWAY FROM ME!" he yells, slamming his hands over his ears in a last ditch effort to block out the sounds of their voices. He slumps down the plaster and presses his forehead against his knees. And then to no one specifically but from himself, he screams wildly, "GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!"

He wants them out of his head, wants them gone. Didn't they understand? He'd tried to _kill _himself just so they would leave him be.

But just when he thinks he might lose it, Malfoy hears a new loud noise coming from his left. It makes the walls shake, vibrating even the floorboards beneath him. For a minute he thinks the earth might have physically shifted, but when a new banging hits, he realizes that it had only been the door- the bedroom door. Someone had shoved it open, and then let it slam, hard, shut again.

Perhaps the ghosts had given up.

"Malfoy!" exclaims a loud voice from behind the barrier of his eyelids. Strangely warm hands reach up and roughly pry his shaking palms from his head. "Hey!" shouts the voice, "Malfoy!"

Draco snaps his eyes back open. The lamp is still broken on the floor, but the ghosts are gone- and Draco thanks his lucky stars before meeting the figure in front of him. As quickly as he'd felt his luck come, the nostalgia of elation leaves his body fast, as if sucked out by a vacuum.

Harry Potter- Harry fucking Potter- is kneeling just centimeters in front of his face and Malfoy doesn't know what he thinks is worse: being haunted by the dead, or being haunted by that bastard Potter for the rest of his miserable, unholy existence.

* * *

><p><strong>Vonne: <strong>Please take the time to review. I'll die of happiness...


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